





Library of Che Theological Seminary 


PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 


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FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE 


REVEREND CHARLES ROSENBURY ERDMAN 
D.D., LL.D. 


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HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 
CLARENCE EDWARD MACARTNEY 





Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/highwaysbywaysof00maca 








WILLIAM BLACK 
Youngest Wounded Union Soldier 


Be and Bowens of te 
Civil War 


By 
Clarence Edward Macirttey 


Author of ‘“‘Lincoln and His Generals’ 


Illustrated with Official Photographs 
from the War Department 


ponent peasant 
Publishers 





COPYRIGHT 1926 
DORRANCE & COMPANY INC 


MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


ae 


To All Who Trod the Highways 
and Byways of the Civil War 





CONTENTS 


MEHMET ITY ers ye vitee Gaur phe ety retsitie tl Axia(G We al aiaenos ses i 
PIP reTTISULA oc tEy Ware iui ous ciate tah ata wUNtec vistas 33 
RUTRCEEATIL ED OL Soh We ten Merv MRA shal'y aut ais Weaen miei cir 51 
PAAR T STL CTT Y cee eu tensile! ule a tinatn Mea) Saal 61 
Pieeoneta ncaa IV ALEW 2 wher alia nang Ws tic aie pints afabe 68 
eae ME ATICI SOEs ie hoe oe Wa seta ebro le ore Srutaie deanate wcahene 75 
22! Sie CS RARE Rohn sits: OUNCE A Re hg ers Na gree HAD 82 
BIGOT UCT © saute suit plete eae auNGie ce atelier s Sas RTGLe af 95 
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.............. 105 
BEETLE V EDL OF fe cog err ee MU Na ver deans ote Bieta ah Sak Soe ened 116 
JOS RE GREE AR AEN ace RE i RA 143 
Urickamatioa! and Chattanooga oe). sicisie ssesclsre elds a's « 165 
PEEIOOUP TY Le! VV LCLETTIESS 8 ta, V-yy tie did oie vole da Ou e/ula!s 177 
Nashville ..... Plant rare ea rs sees ale Rosle t wes at grate 196 
Bere mt ererSUULS MINE ue eer. Ware hee ad Saves ees 207 
PNMIMEE SONA CHAS. we lay tieuie WI) sane Salou & halal cere w. erate 218 
DUP erinatr oi] Tall Ve emis aera eS Als 231 
Wiesner s trail Continued iisice teks vee os 241 
Gor onernnans Cra, Concluded eve ui oe ak we oe 250 
Peotone MOUTt TLOUSE) oy cca ly es Galk wo ole Soe 265 


SPST Pe Che ge co) ee LRN ON UNE Yi Mh Nastia 274 





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


WILLIAM BLAcK, YOUNGEST 


WouNDED UNION SOLDIER.............. Frontispiece 
WINTER QUARTERS. Horace Greeley 

Standing in Foreground........... Facing Page 24 
LANDING SUPPLIES FOR UNION ARMY 

ONCE TAMES RIVER Mine iy tc Viele i ON aS 
BRIDGE Over THE ANTIETAM........ i i Peatiies, 3: 
HIGHWAYS AND Byways Topay..... TN y: 64 
SHERIDAN AND His CAVALRY IN THE 

SHENANDOAH VALLEY........... ‘ ix See nh Vee 
GENERALS Hancock, BARLow, Grae 

MEN PISID NEY 0. cout bala altuniaiclale esas Lee 
GENERAL HooKER ON Lookout Moun- 

Tee) 2 PRN De eRe BIG A nO BAU EE QIN BN NER Ke A Ae 
PPELEVNDUCVOLINTVET).) vic) X, oval orsvarece cae foal feeds e ra OOS 
SCENE OF SHERMAN’S REPULSE BY 

JoHNnsTon, KENESAw Mountain... “ “248 


GRANT AND His STAFF IN THE LAST 
CAMPAIGN. Including: Generals Bar- 
nard and Rawlins, Colonels Badeau, 
Dent and Parker, the Last a Full- 
POPE D ATEN AT) oa ok ae en ahaa flaws x aN AS” 8 





FOREWORD 


Pausanias preserves for us the tradition that those 
who visited by night the famous battlefield of Mara- 
thon, where phantom cavalry rushed to and fro, ina 
spirit of mere vulgar sightseeing and idle curiosity, 
were severely punished in the dark; but those who 
came with filial reverence for their ancestors, and with 
profound sympathy for their heroic achievements, met 
with a kind and gracious reception. I invite the reader 
to come with me and pay a pilgrimage to the battle- 
fields of the Civil War, not in the vulgar spirit of 
sightseeing or idle curiosity, but with a love for his 
Nation and a deep reverence for the principles of de- 
mocracy. There the phantom cavalry and infantry 
of the glorious past shall greet us and tell us how and 
where they fought and died. 


Philadelphia, May 30, 1926 Cy Bee M. 


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HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 
OF THE CIVIL WAR 





I 
BULL RUN 
A Nation AWAKES 


“Mary had 

That was not her name, so far as I knew; but the 
word was sufficient to cause her to turn and look in 
my direction, as she stood on tiptoe, straining the 
muscles of her shapely little legs in an effort to lift the 
lid of the tin mail box and drop a letter. It was no 
unfriendly glance, and with a little encouragement, 
neither too bold nor too shy, she came over to where 
I was sitting on a grassy bank by the roadside under 
the shade of a venerable cedar. The eyes which met 
mine were as blue as the cornflower which grew along 
the bank; her hair hung in two plaits down her back; 
her blue dress showed stains of blackberries, and her 
bare feet smoothed the grass or tossed aside the twigs 
and pebbles. 

“Ts your name Mary?” 

INO 

“What is it?” 

“Judith.” 

“Judith what?” 

“Judith Constance.” 

“Anything else?” 

“Henry—Judith Constance Henry.” 

“Where do you live, Judith?” 

“Up yonder,” pointing with her left hand to an un- 
painted frame house which stood on the hill back of 
us, well shaded by cedars and lilac bushes. 

“Who is that man harrowing yonder in the field?” 

15 


16 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


“My father.” 

“And the two boys with him?” 

“My brothers. Near that tree last week my father 
ploughed up a skull and bones.” 

“The bones of a dead man?” 

“Yes; he must have been a soldier. Every now and 
then father comes upon bones of soldiers.”’ 

“How could soldiers’ bodies have got here? Tell 
me about it.” 

“Don’t you know? Why, I thought everybody 
knew about Bull Run. This is where the battle was 
fought.” 

“Oh! now I understand. This is the Henry farm 
where the battle was fought?” 

“Yes. Yonder (pointing to a little square of trees 
and bushes enclosed with a picket fence and with white 
stones showing through the green) is Grandmother 
Henry’s grave. She was killed in the battle.” 

“How was that?” 

“She was lying in bed sick when the battle com- 
menced. They carried her down yonder to the spring- 
house, but it was worse there and they brought her 
back to the house. A shell came through the wall and 
killed her. I am her great-granddaughter.” 

This, then, is Bull Run! What memories it evokes! 
Memories sad, bitter and glorious. From my little 
blue-eyed and barefooted maiden, symbol of peace, 
affection and innocence, my mind reverted to the day 
when peace and love and innocence had fled these 
pleasant hills, ravines and woodlands, when the shells 
were screaming through the tops of the trees, the bat- 
teries thundering into position along the road in front 
of me; when the grassy slope of the hill was strewn 
with fallen men, some writhing, struggling in vain to 
rise, imploring, cursing, calling for water, for help, 
for mother, for home, for God, for death; and not a 
few to whom that last request had been granted, lying 
now still and quiet in the unbroken satisfaction of ful- 


“, 


BULL RUN 17 


filled desire. Only a few hours since, clad in their 
fantastic uniforms, they had been boys on a vast frolic, 
calling out bantering remarks to one another as the 
regiment of one state marched alongside that of an- 
other; and only a few weeks, or, at the most, months 
since, the hope of their parents and their friends, their 
goings out and comings in followed with pride and 
praise. But now no better than the beast, blood of 
horse mingled with the blood of man; if dying, having 
to die alone; if dead, lying there mere carcases, to be 
shoveled into a hastily dug trench, not for honor’s 
sake, but because being dead they are but nuisance and 
corruption. As if they had not been anointed with 
oil! 

Bull Run is forever first. First in the emotions 
which it stirred; first in the hopes and fears which it 
inspired; first in the pain and anguish which it brought 
to northern and southern homes; first in the splendor 
and romance of battle which it displayed to the combat- 
ants—for the simple reason that it was first in time. 
There hovers ever a solemnity and hush about last 
things and first things. Men could fall by thousands, 
greater defeats could be inflicted and victories be won; 
but never, never again, could the nation, or its armies, 
pass through the experiences of that July Sabbath on 
the hills about Bull Run. 

“No battle of the war was better planned or so 
poorly fought.” That was the verdict of the disgusted 
and humiliated Sherman when he wrote to his wife 
the day after the engagement. ‘The first part, at least, 
was true. The battle was admirably planned. The 
planner thereof was Irvin McDowell, Commander of 
the Union Army, aged forty-three. Schooled in 
France and at West Point, he won a captaincy at 
Buena Vista, and was a favorite with the head of the 
army, General Scott. Modest, unassuming, his abili- 
ties were the sole ground for his appointment. When 
he crossed the Potomac to take command of the forces 


18 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


south of the river, Lincoln offered to make him a 
major general, but McDowell refused, saying that it~ 
might excite jealousy among the other officers and 
hinder his usefulness. That was a good start for any 
general. He was looking for victory, not rank and 
standing. 

Military critics, as a rule, neglect altogether the 
political significance of war. It is easy to say now 
that the government should have waited until a greater 
and more preponderating force had been gathered and 
organized. But there were political conditions which 
made the campaign which resulted in Bull Run in- 
evitable. The nation was restive; it felt that the 
national situation was due in great part to the vacil- 
lating and compromising policy of the government in 
the past. The election of Abraham Lincoln was a 
notification to the world that the “Union must and 
shall be preserved.” But there were apprehensions lest 
this victory, the solemnly declared will of the people, 
should be lost by inactivity and further compromise. 
Spontaneously and irresistibly, the cry arose for im- 
mediate demonstration of the power of the nation to 
vindicate its honor. A blow must be struck, and at 
once, else the nation was humiliated. The place and 
power of this feeling is well shown by the fact that 
for weeks before the battle of Bull Run, Horace Gree- 
ly’s paper, the New York Tribune, ran at the head of 
its columns these sentences: 


Tue NatTiIon’s WarR Cry! 


Forward to Richmond! Forward to Rich- 
mond! Forward to Richmond! ‘The Rebel 
Congress must not be allowed to meet there on 
the 20th of July. By that date the place must be 
held by the National Army!! 


BULL RUN 19 


It is true that McDowell objected, that Scott pro- 
tested, and after the battle, losing control of himself, 
declared to Lincoln that he (Scott) was the great- 
est coward on the face of the earth, and could prove 
it by the fact that he had permitted the army to move 
when he knew it was not ready. But all this, and 
much like it, was merely accidental. Scott, McDowell, 
the Congress, Lincoln himself were insignificant fac- 
tors in this first campaign of the war. It was the 
nation which ordered it, carried it out, suffered with it, 
and wept over it, and yet in it found its soul and dedi- 
cated itself to carry out, through a thousand defeats 
and humiliations, if necessary, the high purpose to 
vindicate national honor and defend the rights of hu- 
manity. Think of Bull Run as a campaign conceived 
at Washington, executed by Scott and McDowell and 
fought by eighteen thousand troops from a dozen 
northern states, and it is only a ridiculous episode in 
military history. But behold in that campaign a puis- 
sant nation, rousing itself from sleep, invoking the 
arbitrament of the God of Battles, by blood and agony 
and anguish of defeat, coming to itself and taking 
its magnificent stand for human liberty amid the jeers 
and scoffings of half the world, and Bull Run becomes 
holy ground. ‘These hillsides and these fields and this 
little brook running under the steep, stony banks are 
sacramental; for there, in the first real battle of the 
long war, the nation poured out its soul unto death and 
was numbered with the transgressors, and was made 
an offering for sin. 

With immense enthusiasm, the soldiers of the 
National Army received the orders in July, 1861, to 
march to the south. It was soon evident that dis- 
cipline and order were to have no part in that cam- 
paign. This great host of buoyant democrats did very 
much as they pleased. When they became thirsty with 
the Virginia heat, they left the ranks and gathered 
about the wells or the springhouses to drink their fill, 


20 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


and when their feet became sore with the long march- 
ing, they sat down under the shade of the trees and. 
removed their shoes and stockings, in a lordly manner 
taking their ease. The blackberry bushes, too, were 
a great temptation, and muskets and haversacks 
were laid aside as the men rushed to gather the 
succulent berry, despite the protests and orders of 
their officers, officers who came from the same towns 
and villages, whom they all knew by their first names, 
and to whom the dangers and sufferings. of war had 
not given that authority which makes an officer mean 
anything to an army. On the seventeenth of July they 
passed through Fairfax Courthouse, and pulling down 
the Confederate banner, raised the Stars and Stripes. 
Who then could have dreamed, that more than three 
years later, after millions of treasure and hundreds of 
thousands of lives had been sacrificed, not many miles 
away, at Culpepper, that same army, tempered by 
many a battle, would be setting forth on the last cam- 
paign. As they saw the Stars and the Bars come flut- 
tering down from the tower of the courthouse, the 
cheering Nationalists thought that in a few days it 
would all be over. That night the army bivouaced at 
Centerville. The excesses incident to invasion had al- 
ready commenced. Some of the men paraded through 
the streets in female attire that they had taken from 
the houses, and one fellow marched up and down in the 
gown and bands of a clergyman, solemnly reading the 
funeral service of Jefferson Davis. And much worse 
than this. Sherman comments on what he witnessed 
in these bristling sentences: ‘“‘No curse could be greater 
than invasion by a volunteer army. No Goths or Van- 
dals ever had less respect for the lives and property of 
friends and foes, and henceforth we ought never to 
hope for any friends in Virginia.” 

After a reconnoissance at one of the lower fords, 
Blackburne’s, on the eighteenth of July, McDowell de- 
termined to make an effort to turn the left flank of 


BULL RUN 21 


the Confederate Army, interposing himself between 
it and its base at Manassas Junction. His plan was 
to have Tyler’s division make a feint at the Stone 
Bridge over Bull Run on the extreme Confederate 
left, while Hunter and Heintzelman, making a long 
detour through the woods, crossed the Bull Run at 
Sudley Church with fifteen thousand troops, and 
marching along the other side of the creek, fell upon 
the rear and flank of the Confederates at the Stone 
Bridge, when Tyler’s division was to cross and the 
' Confederates would be crushed between the two forces. 
The strategy was splendid, but the tactics of the battle 
were poorly executed. The army began to move about 
two in the morning, leaving behind them a rear guard 
and a great company of sightseers from Washington, 
who had learned that a battle was imminent and had 
come out to see the sport, driving in their own carriages 
and bringing with them their own supplies. The pres- 
ence of this horde made the army encampement seem 
like one vast county fair. Some of the three-months 
men’s terms had expired, and despite the entreaties of 
the Secretary of War and McDowell, a Pennsylvania 
regiment and a New York regiment marched off the 
field on the eve of battle. 

McDowell, who had been ill, was taken in a carriage 
to the place at the crossroads chosen for headquarters, 
and anxiously awaited news from the columns which 
were making the turning movement. He had hoped 
to see the attack made early in the morning. Armies 
have always liked to attack at the dawn. But Tyler 
was not in position at the Stone Bridge until six, and 
it was four hours later that Hunter and Heintzelman 
had crossed at Sudley Creek and by the intervening 
ford. The first shot of the day had been fired by one 
of Tyler’s batteries, a great Parrot rifle that broke the 
Sabbath stillness, and all through the day, whenever 
it was fired, dominated the field, making all other 
sounds mere clatter and rattle as compared with its 


22 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


deep bellow. The Confederate commander at the 
Stone Bridge was Evans, a fine soldier of the old army. ~ 
Beauregard and Johnston had planned an attack very 
similar to that of McDowell, crossing in force at the 
enemy’s left, and then attacking in the front. Orders 
to this effect were sent to Early on the extreme Con- 
federate right, but for some mysterious reason, the 
messenger never reached Early, and before he could 
cross, he was called to aid the other wing of the army. 
Evans discerned a cloud of dust floating over the 
woods to his left. He was not long in guessing what 
it meant. The weak effort of Tyler on his front had 
convinced him that the movement at the Stone Bridge 
was only a feint and the real attack was coming on his 
left flank. Sending word to his superiors, Evans faced 
about and marched his men to meet the oncoming 
hosts of Hunter and Heintzelman. These divisions 
had safely crossed the creek and had marched down it 
to within a mile and a half of the Stone Bridge. There 
they were met by the eager troops of Evans, and the 
battle was on. The first clash was on Matthew’s Hill, 
the National Army sweeping the Confederates off this 
eminence and driving them back to the hill on which 
the Henry house stood. This open plateau now be- 
came the scene of the chief fighting. 

What did these men think as brothers for the first 
time clashed with brothers? Were there any regrets, 
misgivings, any eleventh-hour wishes that it had been 
otherwise? Apparently not. “Come on, boys! You’ve 
got your choice at last!” cried the dashing Meagher, 
the Irish adventurer, as he rode to the head of his 
cheering men. The men of the North were eager to 
strike a blow which would crush rebellion at the out- 
set. The men of the South, inflamed with hatred by 
fire-eating oratory, were eager to slay these monsters 
who, as they had been told, had come down to steal 
their property and ravish their women. Sherman, al- 
ways the keen observer, senses the spirit of the south- 


BULLAREN 23 


ern army, when he tells of a Confederate trooper who 
rode his horse across the brook and up to within a 
hundred yards of where he was standing with a group 
of officers, and brandishing his gun, shouted, “Come 
on, you damned black abolitionists !’’ 

Never again did any engagement of the war see 
such a variety of uniforms. In the northern army, 
many of the fashions of the European armies were 
imitated. Ellsworth’s Zouaves, burning to avenge the 
death of their leader, shot when lowering the Con- 
federate flag in a hotel at Alexandria two months be- 
fore, wore the baggy red trousers of the French army; 
other troops had the three-cornered hat and the feather 
and plume of the Garibaldian Italians; and others wore 
the garb of English colonial troops, with a cloth pro- 
tector hanging down their necks. Many of the regi- 
ments wore gray, and in the thick of the fight foe was 
often taken for friend. On the Confederate side there 
was the dirty “butternut,” the new Confederate gray, 
but not a few men were dressed just as they had left 
town or farm, and some of the Confederate officers 
still wore the uniform of the old United States Army. 

It was eleven-thirty o’clock when the Confederate 
troops were driven in confusion off the Matthew Hill 
and to the upper slope of the Henry Hill. The Na- 
tional Army gained possession of the farmhouse and 
McDowell mounted to the top to view the field, order- 
ing up all available troops. The Union ranks were 
thrilling with the tidings of a great victory. Then the 
first fatal mistake of the day was made. Two fine 
batteries of artillery, Rickett’s and Griffin’s, were or- 
dered to advance and take a position in the open field 
a little to the north and west of the Henry house. 
Somewhat amazed, and requesting a written copy of 
the order, these splendid officers promptly limbered 
up and galloped their pieces to the Henry field. They 
had not fired a shot before the Confederate riflemen 
in the woods near by began to pick off men and horses. 


24 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


A regiment, the 33rd Virginia, was climbing over the 
fence along the edge of the field and Rickett and | 
Griffin had their guns turned on them. Major Barry, 
McDowell’s chief of artillery, told them not to fire, 
saying that they were a supporting regiment. While 
' they stood arguing the question, it was solved by the 
disputed regiment pouring in on them a withering and 
destructive fire, Rickett falling by his guns, desper- 
ately wounded. The Zouave regiment that had been 
sent to support the battery, took fright at some of 
Stuart’s “black cavalry,” and fled in panic down the 
hill. This was the beginning of the end. McDowell 
flung company after company and regiment after regi- 
ment onto the hill, which was taken and retaken several 
times. 

But back under the cedar trees was Jackson, 
blood flowing from his hand, fire flashing in his 
eye, his whole form vibrant with the passion of 
the battle. Bee and other officers had told him 
that the day was going against them. This was 
two-thirty o’clock in the afternoon. But Jack- 
son’s men stood firm and earned for their leader 
his sobriquet, the “Stonewall.” Now Jackson 
gave the order to charge and the hunter’s halloo, 
the first rebel yell, rose over the din of battle 
as these men rushed forward with their bayonets, 
sweeping the hill in front of them. But still the 
battle is undecided. An accident, a slip, a chance 
of fate, and either side may conquer. To the left 
and south more clouds of dust. Who are these? 
Friend or foe? They are the brigades of Kirby 
Smith, son of Connecticut, but ardent secession- 
ist, the last troops of Johnston to reach the field, 
just taken off the cars on their way from Win- 
chester. Before the new host, the weary Fed- 
erals begin to withdraw, not frantically, nor in 
a panic-stricken manner, but generally, all along 
the line, as if all had received an order; company 


punoissioy ul suipuryg (2) Aajaeiny vdeIOPFY 


SYUALYVNO WHLNIM 








BULL RUN 25 


after company, regiment after regiment, brigade 
after brigade. All organization is lost as the 
men stream down the roads and paths leading to 
the fords. A strange babel of tongues, answering 
their officers’ vociferous appeals and waving 
swords with a clamor that they had not been 
properly supported, that they could not tell 
friend from foe, and so on; and so on; thoroughly 
convinced, at least, that there was no use fighting 
any longer, and now nothing to do but go back 
to their camps on the Potomac. No rout, no 
wreck, no panic as yet; but thousands of demo- 
crats, each man a sovereign, tired of his job, feel- 
ing that he had done all that was possible, and 
walking from the field much in the way that the 
operatives of a vast factory file out of the build- 
ings and down the streets when the whistle has 
blown. 

The National Army began to leave the field 
about five o’clock, and it was only when the night 
was coming on and its shadows made it difficult 
to tell whether friend or foe was approaching, 
that the retreat became a rout. Over Cub Run 
the Warrenton Pike crossed by a_ stone 
bridge. This bridge became blocked by the wreck 
of a battery and the ford below it was soon im- 
passable with wagons. Here the debacle com- 
menced. Those pushing on from the rear, hear- 
ing in every sound the approach of Stuart’s 
“Black Horse Cavalry,” became desperate, not 
knowing what it was that was holding up their 
column. Artillerymen and wagoners cut their 
horses’ traces and leaped on their backs and gal- 
loped off in the dusk. The infantry would seize 
the stirrups of mounted men and thus be dragged 
over the road; or some, in their desperation, 
would try to ride the beams of the artillery trains 
as they thundered by, many of them losing their 


26 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


grip and falling to the road were ground into 
the dust, mud now, rather, for the inevitable bat- 
tle rain had commenced to fall. The wounded, 
lying helpless under the trees by the roadside, 
lifted their hands and cried out in vain appeal 
to be taken along, but their cries were lost in 
the rumble of wagons, the galloping of horses and 
the hurried tramping of thousands of frightened 
men. At Centreville, McDowell gathered his 
officers together and all voted to make a stand 
there. But commanding general and officers 
were no more now than the lowest soldier in the 
ranks. The soldiers themselves decided what to 
do, and all through the night thé army kept 
streaming along the muddy roads and over the 
wet fields and through the dripping woods on its 
way to the Potomac and safety. It was Sauve qui 
peut over again. 

Let us now pick our way through the wood and 
along the crowded roads, past the groups of the 
fugitives until we come once more to the scene 
of the battle. Here they lie, poor fellows, a little 
hour or so ago resplendent in their gay uniforms, 
joking with their companions and boasting of their 
deeds, a few of them with handcuffs and ropes 
with which to bind their prisoners. Instead of 
that, they themselves have been taken prisoners 
by death, and the iron has entered into their 
souls. The rain pours down upon their white 
faces and wide-open, staring eyes, and converts 
the caked blood and dust on their clothing into a 
reddish-yellow liquid which oozes into the soil. 
How torn and soiled and somber now those once 
glorious uniforms: the red Zouave trousers, the 
smart gray suits of the Wisconsin and Maine 
regiments, the blue of New York, the three-cor- 
nered hats of the Garibaldians, the great plumed 
helmets, such as Cesar’s legionaries wore, of the 


BULL RUN ad. 


Virginia cavalry. But happier these dead than 
the others who lie in the grass and among the 
trampled corn, calling out in their misery, and yet 
afraid to call, lest the foe, that cruel, no-quarter- 
giving, wounded-abusing, dead-desecrating foe, 
about whom their minds had been filled with wild, 
false tales, should come upon them. Worse yet, 
the agony of the beasts. Sherman saw here his 
first field of glory, but it was the anguish of the 
beasts, not of the men, that filled him with hor- 
ror: “Then for the first time I saw the carnage 
of battle; men lying in every conceivable shape, 
and mangled in a horrible way; but this did not 
make a particle of impression upon me, but horses 
running about riderless with blood streaming from 
their nostrils, lying on the ground hitched to 
guns, gnawing their sides in death.” 

Up in the battered Henry house there are lights 
showing. The surgeons are working there over 
the wounded; in the little room to the left of the 
entrance, a sheet has been drawn over a form on 
the bed; it is the body of the octogenarian, Judith 
Henry, who had been killed by a shell. 

Away back in the wood towards Manassas, 
General Bee, the same who gave Jackson his 
sobriquet beneath the cedars, lies dying in a log 
cabin. His only words are, “Find Imboden! Find 
Imboden!” During the early stages of the battle, 
Imboden’s battery had been left in an exposed 
position without proper support. For this Im- 
boden blamed his superior, Bee, and cursed him 
bitterly. Bee learned of this, and before he died 
wished to tell Imboden with his own lips that he 
had given orders for his relief. All through the 
night men are scouring the fields and the woods 
and riding up and down the road searching for 
Imboden. At length they find him, caked with 
blood and sweat, the blood coming from one of his 


28 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


ears, deaf now forever from the concussion of the 
guns, his red undershirt torn by the bayonet of a 
huge, panic-stricken Southerner fleeing from the 
field, and who, when Imboden, with drawn sword, 
threw himself across his path, lunged at him with 
the bayonet, knocking him over, and thus es- 
caped. This is the wild-looking officer who steps 
under the roof of the log cabin and hastily takes 
Bee by the hand. He calls him by name; no 
curses now, but softly, fondly, filially. But none 
answered! Too late, now, dying Bee, to make 
your explanations! Too late now, fierce-looking 
Imboden—hereafter much to be heard of in this 
war between the brothers—to take back the 
curses! 

Irrevocable! Irrevocable! That is the word 
to write after Bull Run. Hopes of further com- 
promise, of coming to an understanding, of a 
speedy victory on either side, of taking back hot, 
cursing words—all that now forever gone. Now 
there is nothing to do, inexorable North, defiant 
South, but to see the thing through to the end, 
to drink slowly, deliberately, with full taste and 
appreciation of its wormwood and gall, the bitter 
cup of pain and grief and anguish. 

Jefferson Davis, head of the new State, reached 
Manassas late in the afternoon and rode out to- 
wards Bull Run. He could hardly be persuaded 
that there was a victory when he saw wounded 
men coming to the rear escorted by four and five 
unwounded. That, he said, was more like a de- 
feat. He remarks bitterly about the handcuffs 
which had been picked up on the field, things be- 
longing more to thieves and police, he says, than 
to the soldiers of a free nation. 

Where was Lincoln? What was he doing? 
What thinking about during the long hours of 
that eventful Sabbath? At eleven o’clock he went 


BULL RUN 29 


quietly to the Presbyterian Church. At three in 
the afternoon he went over to army headquarters 
and roused General Scott out of his afternoon 
nap. The reports were vague, but nothing yet 
of an alarming nature, telling of the first suc- 
cesses. Scott assured him that all was going well 
and went back to sleep, Lincoln to drive. At six, 
Seward, pale and haggard, came to the White 
House. 

“Where is the President?” 

nirone to. drive’ 

“Have you any late news?” 

“Yes; McDowell has won a complete victory.” 

“That is not true. The battle is lost. Find the 
President and tell him to come immediately to 
General Scott’s.”’ 

After a little Lincoln came home and listened 
in silence as his secretaries gave him Seward’s 
message. When he reached General Scott’s, this 
telegram was read to him: “General McDowell’s 
army in full retreat through Centreville. The day 
is lost. Save Washington and the remnants of 
this army.’ In the evening the newspaper cor- 
respondents, the Senators and Representatives, 
who had followed the army. to battle, began to 
arrive, and all through the night Lincoln listened 
to their accounts of what had transpired. Monday 
dawned with gloom and drizzle of rain. Even so 
were the spirits of the nation. A week of depres- 
sion and alarm followed. Even the strongest be- 
gan jto waver. The fierce editor of the Tribune, 
the paper that kept standing at the head of its 
columns the cry, “Forward to Richmond! For- 
ward to Richmond!” thus addressed the Presi- 
dent: 


This is my 7th sleepless night—yours, too, 
doubtless, yet I think I shall not die, because 


30 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


I have no right to die. You are not consid- 
ered a great man, and I am a hopelessly 
broken one. You are now undergoing a ter- 
rible ordeal, and God has thrown the gravest 
‘responsibilities upon you. Do not fear to 
meet them. Can the rebels be beaten after 
all that has occurred, and in view of the actual 
state of feeling caused by our late awful dis- 
aster? If they can, and it is your business to 
ascertain and decide, write me that such is 
your judgment, so that I may know and do 
my duty. And if they CANNOT be beaten 
—if our recent disaster is fatal— do not fear 
to sacrifice yourself to your country. If the 
rebels are not to be beaten, then every drop 
of blood henceforth shed in this quarrel will 
be wantonly, wickedly shed, and the guilt will 
rest heavily on the soul of every promoter of 
the crime. 
Yours in the depths of bitterness, 
Horace Greely. 


Yes, Greely was right. Lincoln was not yet 
accounted a great man, and perhaps he had not 
slept any more that week than Greely. “Can the 
rebels be beaten?’ That was the question which 
was passing through the minds of the nation’s 
leaders; all but one of them, the leader of leaders, 
soon to be. The calm look on Lincoln’s face when, 
on the Sabbath evening he first heard the mes- 
sage from Seward, told plainly enough what his 
answer would be. The “rebels” could be beaten, 
and would be beaten! There Lincoln was the 
incarnation of the thinking and feeling nation. He 
did not despair of the Republic. The Union could 
be preserved and would be preserved, though 
hell itself rose in arms against it. 

Out in Illinois a camp-meeting revival was in 


BULL RUN 31 


session. The preacher read to the congregation 
the tidings of the battle, and then added: “Breth- 
ren, it is time to adjourn this meeting and go to 
drilling!” There spake the nation—time to ad- 
journ all else and go to drilling, and thence to 
fighting, until the Union was saved and democ- 
racy vindicated. 

Conspicuous among the dead on the field of 
battle at Bull Run were the red-clad soldiers of 
the New York Zouaves. When the flag was fired 
on at Sumter one of the first regiments which 
came pouring into Washington for the defense of 
the nation was the New York Zouaves, under the 
command of a boyish colonel, Ellsworth. When 
a young lawyer in Chicago, Ellsworth had or- 
ganized the Chicago Zouaves and had given ex- 
hibitions of their stirring drill in the chief eastern 
cities. He was acquainted with Lincoln and, 
when the war broke out, the regiment which he 
had organized out of the men of the fire depart- 
ment of New York City was one of the first ac- 
cepted for service. When Virginia finally for- 
mally seceded from the Union, President Lincoln 
had this regiment of Zouaves, together with the 
First Michigan Infantry, sent across the Potomac 
to Alexandria. From the White House Lincoln 
and his household had been able to see through a 
glass the Confederate flag flying over the Mar- 
shall House in Alexandria. As soon as Ellsworth 
reached the Virginia shore, he took a private with 
him and, entering the hotel, went to the roof and 
pulled down the flag. As he was descending, he 
was shot and killed by the proprietor of the hotel. 
This was the first casualty of the war on the soil 
of the seceded states and produced a thrill in the 
North second only to the firing on the flag at 
Sumter and the attack of the mob on the Sixth 
Massachusetts as it passed through Baltimore. 


32 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


The young officer’s funeral was held in the East 
Room of the White House. As Lincoln gazed on 
the lifeless features he seemed to have a vision 
of what was to follow in the years to come, for 
the exclaimed, “My boy! My boy! Was it neces- 
sary this sacrifice should be made?” 

This attractive young colonel, over whose dead 
body Lincoln uttered that sigh of present and 
anticipated sorrow, was only the first fruits of a 
crimson harvest of the youth and manhood of the 
nation which the naked arm of war was to reap, 
ere the nation’s unity had been vindicated and 
peace established. By the time the mayflowers 
of 1865 were smiling peace upon the wounded 
nation, 359,528 young men were on record as hav- 
ing followed in the footsteps of Ellsworth. After 
Bull Run the nation awoke to the fact that it was 
at war, and that war meant suffering and death. 


II 
THE PENINSULA 
A MAGNIFICENT EPISODE 


“So long as life lasts the survivors of those 
glorious days will remember with quickened pulse 
the attitude of that army when it reached the 
goal for which it had striven with such transcend- 
ent heroism. Exhausted, depleted in numbers, 
bleeding at every pore, but still proud and de- 
fiant, and strong in the consciousness of a great 
feat of arms heroically accomplished, it stood 
ready to renew the struggle with undiminished 
ardor whenever its commander should give the 
word. It was one of those magnificent episodes 
which dignify a nation’s history and are fit sub- 
jects for the grandest efforts of the poet and the 
painter.”’ 

These words were the last ever written by 
General McClellan. They were found on his desk 
the morning after his sudden death in 1886. Had 
the General’s heart been opened, there would 
have been found written on it, “The Army of the 
Potomac.” His dying tribute to the army that 
fought with him during those desperate Seven 
Days in the Peninsula contained a true account 
of what transpired: “It was one of those mag- 
nificent episodes which dignify a nation’s his- 
tory.” But towards the great end in view, the 
defeat of the Confederate armies in the field and 
the overthrow of their government, this “magnifi- 
cent episode’ made a very small contribution. 

By the end of May, McClellan’s army, which 

33 


34 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


had been transported by water to Norfolk and 
had advanced slowly up the peninsula, lay about 
seven miles from Richmond, the goal of its march. 
The early successes of the Confederacy which 
had raised to so high a pitch the hopes of the 
people of the South had been followed by serious 
reverses in every area of the war. In the West 
Grant had taken Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, 
and had emerged a victor in the bloody battle 
fought in the solitudes of Shiloh, on the Tennes- 
see River. Farragut had taken New Orleans and 
the Confederacy was severed in twain. In the 
East the naval forces of the United States pa- 
trolled all the waters, and after the evacuation 
of Yorktown the famous ram, the Merrimac, un- 
able to put to sea without a port for supplies, and 
unable to proceed up the James to Richmond, 
had been broken up. Now the highly organized 
Army of the Potomac under General McClellan 
lay so close to Richmond that on a clear day 
the outposts could see the spires of the city 
churches and on a clear, still night could hear 
the bells strike the hour. That army was the 
grim and visible embodiment of an awakened 
nation’s indomitable purpose. 

The approach of McClellan’s well-drilled and 
splendidly equipped army caused no little misgiv- 
ing at Richmond. Jefferson Davis was visibly 
distressed and sought consolation in the hopes 
of the Christian faith, being baptized at his resi- 
dence and confirmed at St. Paul’s Church by 
Bishop Johns. The archives of the Confederate 
Government were collected and made ready to 
ship to Columbia, South Carolina, and trains with 
steam in the engines’ boilers lay ready to trans- 
port the members of the government. A heavy 
shadow had fallen across the face of the South. 

Upon nearing Richmond, McClellan had di- 


THE PENINSULA 35 


vided his army into two sections. The greater 
part of the army lay north of the Chickahominy 
River, whence connection was had with the 
Union base at White House, on the Pamunkey, 
and near to the York River. Transports could 
come up the river and keep the army well sup- 
plied. But the selection of the York River as 
the base of operations was not McClellan’s first 
choice. It was determined by the fact that the 
Ist Corps, McDowell’s, which had been held 
back from his army and which was now stationed 
near Fredericksburg, was under orders to ad- 
vance across the country by land and join forces 
with McClellan. This necessitated the choice of 
the York, instead of the more practical James, for 
by maintaining a footing on the York, and to 
the north of Richmond, McClellan would be in 
a position to await the arrival of McDowell. But 
in order to keep an hostile front towards Rich- 
mond, to the south of the Chickahominy, Mc- 
Clellan kept two of his divisions, those under 
Keyes and Heintzleman, on the south side of the 
river. He was not unaware of the danger of such 
an arrangement, his army divided by a stream, and 
that stream likely at any time to flood the 
bridges, but felt that no other course was open 
to him. 

It was this exposed state of that portion of the 
Union Army on the south of the Chickahominy 
which prompted the Confederate commander, 
General Joseph E. Johnston, to attack in that 
quarter, hoping to annihilate the two corps be- 
fore McClellan could come to their rescue. This 
he attempted to accomplish on the 3lst day of 
May at Seven Pines. Because of the fact that 
his orders to the various commanders were given 
verbally, and not written, there was confusion 
and lack of co-ordination in the Confederate as- 


36 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


sault. But as it was, they came dangerously near 
being successful. The advanced Union divisions 
were driven back in confusion, and it was only the 
arrival of Sumner on the field from the north 
bank of the river that saved the day. That noble 
officer had been stationed near the river with 
instructions to hold himself in readiness to cross 
over when the orders arrived. There had been 
heavy rains the night before and the bridges were 
already swaying dangerously in the flood when 
he reached them; but the weight of the men soon 
settled the bridges back on their piling and the 
crossing was effected without loss. The presence 
of these fresh troops turned the tide of battle 
and the Confederates drew off from the bloody 
field. In the closing hours of battle General 
Johnston was wounded and the command de- 
volved upon the next in rank, General G. W. 
Smith. On June Ist, General Robert E. Lee, who, 
after an unsuccessful campaign in West Virginia 
and some engineering work in the Carolinas, was 
acting in the capacity of military adviser to the 
Confederate Government, was appointed to suc- 
ceed Johnston. On the first day of June he did 
not go to the front, with chivalrous consideration 
giving General Smith a chance to win laurels on 
that day if the opportunity presented itself. The 
grimness of war is illustrated by an incident re- 
lated by General John B. Gordon, one of the 
Confederate commanders. As he rode forward 
into battle he saw among the wounded his nine- 
teen-year-old brother, a captain, shot through the 
lungs. He dared not turn aside even to ease the 
agony of a brother. This brother afterwards re- 
covered from his wounds, but only to perish in 
the battle of the Wilderness. 

After the repulse of the Confederate attack in 
the battle of Seven Pines, McClellan continued 


THE PENINSULA 37 


to strengthen himself and to prepare for the in- 
vestment of Richmond. His reports to his gov- 
ernment are filled with complaints and calls for 
reinforcements. The weather, too, he declared 
was against him, forgetting, as Lincoln said after 
reading one of these reports, that the rain fell on 
the just and the unjust alike. His one great com- 
plaint, and a very proper one, was the continued 
withholding from his army of the fine corps un- 
der McDowell. This corps had been retained in 
the first instance because it was thought neces- 
sary for the defense of Washington. It was then 
directed to march in the direction of McClellan’s 
army, when the activities of “Stonewall” Jackson 
in the Shenandoah Valley caused it to be dis- 
patched into that quarter. The purpose of Jack- 
son’s outbreaks had been to draw off some of 
McClellan’s troops that were closing in upon 
Richmond, or at least keep reinforcements from 
joining him. In this Jackson was more than suc- 
cessful. But it seems not to have been a feeling 
of panic or insecurity at Washington, following 
Jackson’s victory over Banks at Winchester and 
his descent upon Harper’s Ferry, that dictated the 
diversion of McDowell from his true objective, 
McClellan’s army, but rather the hope that Mc- 
Dowell, Banks and Fremont together could catch 
the bold raider and crush him. The trap was care- 
fully laid, but Jackson outmarched them and out- 
guessed them. McDowell’s division had accom- 
plished nothing in that quarter, and on the other 
hand, its absence had greatly hampered McClel- 
lan. If McDowell had been permitted to join the 
Army of the Potomac, instead of being sent off 
on the wild-goose chase after Jackson, there is 
every reason to believe that Richmond must have 
fallen and, possibly, the war been ended. 

All this was bad. But the worst was yet to 


38 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


come. It was bad that Jackson had slipped out 
of the steel trap that the Union officers had set 
for him; but it was well-nigh disastrous for Mc- 
Clellan that Jackson was permitted stealthily to 
withdraw his army from the Valley and get a 
position on the right flank of the Union Army. 
With three armies in the field to watch him and 
pursue him, the government at Washington could 
give McClellan no certain knowledge as to Jack- 
son’s whereabouts, and it was not until the after- 
noon of June 24th, just when he was about to 
make an advance towards Richmond, that Mc- 
Clellan learned that Jackson was marching to- 
wards his right. 

The plan of Lee was to attack that portion of 
McClellan’s army north of the Chickahominy and 
destroy it before succor could come. Jackson, by 
getting far around their right was to cut them 
off from their base at White House. The ex- 
posed divisions would be driven into the Chicka- 
hominy, and the rest of the army overwhelmed 
in the pestilential swamps or driven in confusion 
down the York River. McClellan’s advance had 
been timed for the twenty-sixth, but on that day 
the advanced pickets were being driven in by the 
Confederate advance and the great struggle which 
was to last for seven days was on. 

Jackson had notified Lee in council with his 
generals at Richmond, on the twenty-third of 
June, that he could get his men up by the morn- 
ing of the twenty-sixth, and the attack was ac- 
cordingly set for that day. As a matter of fact 
he did not get into position to do any fighting 
that day, and the Confederate attack under A. P. 
Hill spent itself in sanguinary and fruitless as- 
saults upon Porter’s advanced position at Beaver 
Dam Creek, where McCall’s splendid Pennsyl- 
vania Reserves stood like a wall of stone. South- 


THE PENINSULA 39 


ern military writers lay great stress upon the 
fact that Jackson’s miscalculation and delay 
spoiled the chances of a complete victory for the 
Confederate Army. They do not seem to take 
into consideration the fact that Lee, as com- 
mander-in-chief, and responsible for all move- 
ments, ought to have known whether or not 
Jackson was up and ready before he let Hill go 
forward in the bloody and hopeless assault, in- 
stead of relying on word that Jackson had given 
him three days before. It is interesting to note 
that according to General Alexander, the reason 
for Jackson’s delay was that, being averse to 
military activity on the Sabbath, he had spent the 
previous Sunday in idlness at a house on the line 
of his march. The same general affirms that on 
the critical twenty-ninth of June McClellan was 
able to get through the White Oak Swamp only 
because of the inactivity of Jackson, who would 
exert neither himself nor his troops on the Lord’s 
Day. 

When McClellan learned of the attack on the 
right of his army posted north of the Chicka- 
hominy, he conceived what some have called the 
finest inspiration of his career, and others the 
movement which brought the Peninsula cam- 
paign to nothing and postponed for a number of 
years the ending of the Civil War. This was his 
plan to abandon his base on the York River at 
White House and fight his way across the penin- 
sula through the swamps and jungles to a new 
base on the James River. All his orders were 
now to that end, and once decided upon and in- 
augurated, no more difficult movement was ever 
carried out in so masterly a manner. There were 
scores of times when McClellan might have lost 
his army, and perhaps the Union cause, by a 
single false move; but that single mistake was 


40 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


never made. The whole retrograde movement 
was a masterpiece of military brains. It has been 
maintained that while the greater portion of 
Lee’s army was attacking Porter and his few 
‘thousands north of the Chickahominy, McClellan, 
had he possessed the daring and vision of a great 
commander, would have struck straight for Rich- 
mond, breaking his way through the few regi- 
ments that Magruder interposed between him and 
the Confederate capital. McClellan’s own ex- 
planation is that Lee was now well into his rear 
and in a position to sever his communications 
with the White House base, and that even if he 
had taken Richmond he would have been desti- 
tute of food. McClellan never gives a foolish 
reason for anything he did or refused to do. But 
undoubtedly a more bold commander would have 
taken the chance and pushed for Richmond. 
After the repulse of Lee at Beaver Dam, Por- 
ter received orders to fall back to a strong posi-~ 
tion at Gaines’ Mill covering the approaches to 
the bridges over the Chickahominy. Here on the 
twenty-seventh of June was staged one of the 
most gallant achievements of the whole war. 
Hour after hour, Lee and his sixty thousand 
flung themselves upon Porter and his twenty-five 
thousand. It was not until evening that the 
Union line was broken and Porter fell back to 
the last summit between him and the Chicka- 
hominy, night putting an end to the conflict. It 
was a magnificent stand, in every way comparable 
to that of Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga,” 
when the Confederate Army flung itself upon 
him at the close of that disastrous September 
day in 1863, when Rosecrans was driven back 
into Chattanooga. Porter’s great effort was 
partly inspired by the thought that through his 
holding on McClellan would smash his way into 


THE PENINSULA 41 


Richmond. Porter was beloved and admired by 
McClellan, yet the latter gave him but slender 
support, apparently being engrossed with the 
plan of getting his army started for the James 
River. No officer rendered more brilliant service 
in the Peninsula than Porter. His subsequent 
career was one of sorrow and controversy. A 
court-martial found him guilty of insubordina- 
tion and disobedience of orders in the second 
battle of Bull Run and he was dismissed from 
the army, ‘‘and forever disqualified from holding 
any office of trust under the government of the 
United States.” In 1878 his case was reopened, 
but all that could be done was to remove the dis- 
qualification. Grant took his part in an article in 
the North American entitled, ‘‘An Undeserved 
Stigma.” In 1886, after a similar bill had been 
vetoed by President Arthur, President Hayes 
signed the bill restoring Porter to rank in the 
United States Army. 

On the night of the twenty-seventh of June, 
McClellan gathered his generals about him near 
the south entrance of the Alexander bridge and 
discussed with them the movements of the next 
days. The project of assaulting Richmond was 
discussed, but the general opinion was for the 
move towards the James. In giving the orders 
for this movement, McClellan completely deceived 
Lee, who thought that he would either try to 
fight his way back to his base at White House or 
retreat down the York River in the direction of 
Norfolk. It never dawned upon him that Mc- 
Clellan was plunging into the swamps, headed 
for the James. For these reasons, Lee held his 
troops north of the Chickahominy, sending some 
to White House only to find an abandoned base, 
and some of them down the Chickahominy to 
hold bridges which McClellan had no idea of at- 


42 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


tempting to cross. Thus while Lee was waiting 
to strike at McClellan as he attempted to move 
down the Peninsula along the York, McClellan 
was putting his enormous trains, like a huge ser- 
‘pent, in motion through the defiles of the jungle 
and the swamps. 

To appreciate the difficulty of McClellan’s un- 
dertaking, one must travel through the country 
itself. The soil is a mixture of clay and quick- 
sand, the rains of spring and summer quickly 
turning the roads into a morass. The roads wind 
through growths of stunted oaks and pines, cross- 
ing over innumerable streams, themselves incon- 
siderable, but quickly overflowing all their banks 
and carrying away their bridges. In the more 
remote regions the few roads lead through dis- 
mal swamps and bayous, noisome and pestilential 
with their vapors and dark with the shadows of 
the low branching trees whose limbs are cov- 
ered with melancholy vines. Never was there a 
region so difficult for the march of an army or 
so unfavorable to the spirits of the soldiers. 
Through such a waste as this it was that Mc- 
Clellan led his army in the last days of June, 
1862. That it was ever accomplished is a monu- 
ment to the military skill of its leader and the 
discipline of the army itself. The first concern 
was for the trains, these taking the roads and 
the soldiers marching alongside. Twenty-five 
hundred beef cattle went bellowing before the 
host, now weary and lying down in the roads re- 
gardless of the blows and oaths of their drivers, 
and now stricken with panic and rushing forward 
with menace for the soldiers. 

Owing to Lee’s miscalculations as to his move- 
ments, McClellan had a whole day’s, start in the 
race for the James. But Lee was soon on his 
rear, striking at him on the twenty-ninth at 


THE PENINSULA 43 


Savage Station, where McClellan left behind 
twenty-five hundred sick and wounded, and again 
on the thirtieth, at Frazier’s Farm, where roads led 
to the James River. Jackson failed Lee at White 
Oak Swamp, on the twenty-ninth, spending all 
day either resting or rebuilding the bridge over 
the Chickahominy, so that the last Federal regi- 
ments passed in safety out of the dangerous defile. 
The final struggle in the week of battles was at 
Malvern Hill, where McClellan had posted his 
army in an impregnable position. In a series of 
disjointed attacks, worse than at Gettysburg, Lee 
suffered a bloody repulse, leaving the fields be- 
fore the Crew house covered with the slain. He 
then drew back towards Richmond and McClellan 
stationed his army at Harrison’s Landing. Mc- 
Clellan had not lost a single regiment and his 
army on the retreat had inflicted greater damages 
on their enemies than they themselves had re- 
ceived. Nevertheless, the sentimental victory 
was with Lee. He had to all appearances driven 
McClellan down the Peninsula away from Rich- 
mond and raised the siege of the capital. As a 
matter of fact, McClellan was in a better position 
than ever for an offensive and still only about 
fifteen miles from Richmond. Had he been re- 
inforced and leit to his own devices, he would 
have taken the city. But the government ruled 
otherwise, and the gallant army which had made 
one of the most marvelous retrograde movements 
in all history was re-embarked and sent to rein- 
force Pope. The final protest of McClellan 
against this policy was prophetic: “Here is the 
true defense of Washington. It is here on the 
banks of the James that the fate of the Union 
should be decided.” And so it was. Grant com- 
menced in 1864 where McClellan left off in 1862. 

Among the great figures in the supreme crisis 


44 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


- of American history, there is no one over whom 
there has been in the past, and is likely to be in 
the future, so much controversy as George B. Mc- 
Clellan. The sixty-one years which have elapsed 
since the close of the war have sifted out the 
characters of many an actor on that great stage 
and settled many a controversy. But time seems 
not to settle the dispute over McClellan. What 
was he? An incompetent boaster, sublime egoist, 
procrastinator, or a devoted patriot and a military 
genius of the first order, who, if he had been 
left unmolested by his government, would have 
brought the war to a quick conclusion? 

Of one thing we may be sure, McClellan dur- 
ing the critical days of his campaign in the Penin- 
sula was convinced that the authorities at Wash- 
ington wished him to fail and were withholding | 
from him troops and information so that he would 
fail. He was a Democrat, the idol of the Army, 
was opposed to the plans of the Abolitionists, and 
for these reasons a case has been made out that 
the Cabinet, particularly Stanton, was determined 
to break him. If so, this was accomplished when 
his army was withdrawn from the Peninsula. In 
private letters to McClellan, Stanton protests his 
friendship, but against this there are perplexing 
statements on the part of Secretary Wells and 
Blair, indicating great enmity towards McClellan 
on the part of Stanton. When it was proposed 
that Lincoln restore McClellan to command, 
which he did after Pope’s disaster at Second Bull 
Run, Stanton was in a rage, and declared that 
he would prefer the loss of the capital to the resto- 
ration of McClellan to command of the Army. 
Probably it was Lincoln more than Stanton who 
was responsible for the great military blunder of 
withholding at the last moment McDowell and 
the Ist Corps; but it is difficult to show that the 


THE PENINSULA 45 


government ever deliberately sought to undermine 
McClellan and destroy his campaign. That is un- 
thinkable. McClellan had too morbid a distrust 
of, together with too proud a scorn for, his civil 
superiors. This distrust and anger found its most 
unlicensed expression in the famous report which 
McClellan sent to Stanton from Savage Station, 
on June 28, 1862, two days after the movement 
towards the James had commenced. In this re- 
port he insists that with ten thousand reserves 
he could take Richmond. He concludes this ex- 
traordinary indictment of his government with 
this final thrust: “I feel too earnestly to- 
night. I have seen too many dead and wounded 
comrades to feel otherwise than that the gov- 
ernment has not sustained this army. If you do 
not do so now, the game is lost. If I save this 
army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks 
to you or to any other persons in Washington. 
You have done your best to sacrifice this army.” 

Military writers are wont to dismiss McClellan 
by saying that he was a great organizer rather 
than a great leader. That he was a great organ- 
izer and drillmaster none has ever disputed. 
Only an army that had been thoroughly organ- 
ized could ever have stood the strain of the re- 
treat across the Peninsula, marching by night 
and fighting by day, yet maintaining its organic 
unity and its splendid spirit. The rabble and 
and horde of Bull Run had become an army. 
McClellan’s second feat as an organizer was when he 
took the remnants of Pope’s beaten army and the 
fragments of his own former army on the seventh of 
September, 1862, and quickly transformed this 
military mob into the magnificent machine which 
within ten days broke the sword of Lee’s in- 
vasion on the banks of the Antietam. 

But the careful student will see at once that 


46 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


to accomplish this work of reorganization it 
took more than a mere organizer, a man of plans 
and details. What it required was above all a 
great personality. A great, a magnetic personality, 
‘McClellan undoubtedly was. Without this in- 
definable power and attraction of personality, 
McClellan’s trained mind and military brain could 
never have accomplished the miracle of twice 
making over the Army of the Potomac and in- 
spiring it to fight. No general in the whole war, 
on either side, so moved the hearts of the soldiers 
under him as did McClellan. His presence on 
the line immediately evoked enthusiastic cheer- 
ing, and McClellan was not far from the truth 
when he wrote, “I think there is scarcely a man 
in this whole army who would not give his life 
for me.” Here was a man who had the greatest 
and most to be envied power and influence that 
Heaven bestows upon her children. Before him 
masses of men were like the waving corn when 
the wind breathes softly through it on a Septem- 
ber evening. 

With this extraordinary personal influence, the 
strange thing is that McClellan made so little use 
of it. He was seldom seen near the front during a 
battle. At Williamsburg he was twelve miles in the 
rear. At Seven Pines he was across the river at 
Gaines’ Mill; during the desperate fighting of the 
Seven Days he was always away from his men, pre- 
paring in advance the position of the army for the next 
day. At Malvern Hill he sat smoking on the Galena 
in the river, with the thunders of the battle rolling 
about him, and Heintzleman sending messages that his 
absence depressed his men and disastrous results might 
ensue. At Antietam much of his time was spent out 
of sight of the battle at his headquarters, although he 
does say that on the afternoon of the seventeenth he 
rode in among the men of Sedgwick’s division and 


THE PENINSULA 47 


rallied them in person. McClellan had a tender heart 
and a great distaste for the horrible sights of the bat- 
tlefield. This may have had something to do with his 
keeping aloof from the men when they were in action. 
But the chief reason was that he considered it to be 
the function of the commander-in-chief to receive re- 
ports of the progress of the battle and issue orders ac- 
cordingly, rather than provoke cheering by appearing 
on the line. The fact that he never made any serious 
mistake nor sacrificed his troops without inflicting a 
greater loss on the enemy may be attributed in great 
part to his habit of seclusion during an engagement. 

That the spell which McClellan cast over his friends 
was not broken even by the hatred and animosities of 
the war, is shown by a letter which Pickett, afterwards 
of everlasting fame at Gettysburg, wrote to his wife 
on June 1, 1862, at the close of the fight at Seven 
Pines: “I have heard that my dear old friend, Mc- 
Clellan, is lying ill about ten miles from here. May 
some loving, soothing hand minister to him. He was, 
he is, and will always be, even were his pistol pointed 
at my heart, my dear, loved friend. May God bless 
him and spare his life.”’ 

When all has been said that can be said, the Penin- 
sular Campaign still remains the mystery of the Civil 
War. Here was a great army, splendidly drilled, or- 
ganized and equipped, full of confidence in and burn- 
ing with affection for its commander, with implicit 
faith in the righteousness and moral grandeur of its 
cause, and with a fighting spirit unsurpassed by any 
army during the whole war; yet it accomplished noth- 
ing save a glorious defeat. The lack of results is not 
to be attributed to the military genius of the gen- 
eral commanding the opposing army, for no stu- 
dent of the campaign, no matter how under the 
spell of Robert E. Lee, can claim for him any 
brilliance of action or design during the days that 
he followed McClellan down the Peninsula. At 


48 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


the very outset he permitted himself to be com- 
pletely misled as to the direction the latter was 
going to take, whether along the York or towards 
the James. Then he allowed McClellan to pass 
without injury through the dangerous defiles of 
the great swamp, the Confederate movements be- 
ing without co-ordination or timeliness; and this 
blunder at the beginning and the mismanagement 
while McClellan was getting out of the swamp— 
for this was Lee’s golden opportunity—were 
crowned by the colossal folly of the bloody assault 
at Malvern Hill. The generalship of Lee, then, 
is not the solution of the enigma or the explana- 
tion of the complete failure of the Federal cam- 
paign. It is a mystery. The nearest we can come 
to the penetration of the mystery is to say, not 
that McClellan could not make the army fight, 
for no army ever fought more gallantly or with 
more ardor and dangerous courage, but that for 
some unaccountable cause, something within the 
mentality of McClellan himself, which yet eludes 
definition, he could not lead his army to great 
victory. 

There are two National cemeteries in the Pen- 
insula country. One of them is near the Frazier’s 
Farm battlefield on the edge of the White Oak 
Swamp. Here the dead from the fields of the 
Seven Days’ fighting were buried, having been 
collected from swamp and bayous and thickets 
and sandy fields. The fine brick walls of the 
cemetery with the ivy trailing over it and the 
well-kept lawns within the walls contrast strangely 
with the desolate wilderness of tangled thickets 
and malarial swamps which surround it. I had 
been wandering on a summer’s day over the bat- 
tlefields between Seven Pines and Malvern Hill, 
following the retreat of McClellan and locating 
the places where, like a wounded lion, his army 


MAAIN SHWNV( AHL NO AWHV NOINN YOd SHIIddNS ONIGNVWJ 














THE PENINSULA 49 


from time to time turned savagely at bay and 
fought off its pursuers. But nothing had I seen, 
save here and there a few mounds where the 
breastworks had run, to remind me of the fear- 
ful conflict that had been staged there. Suddenly 
I came upon the walls of the cemetery and saw 
the flag of the nation floating over the pines and 
the live oaks. Within were the seried ranks of 
little white markers, the known and the unknown 


- dead. 


I used to feel, when I visited other National 
cemeteries, that there was a sad difference be- 
tween the graves of the known and the unknown 
dead. But today, in this solitary cemetery, in 
the midst of the swamps, I felt that there was lit- 
tle difference. All alike, whether with name and 
regiment and state noted, or just with a number, 
were now unknown. “John Wilson—Fifth Ohio 
Cavalry” seemed just as lonely and forgotten as 
“No. 10—Unknown.” Of all the cemeteries I 
have visited this seemed to me the saddest, the 
loneliest. Few ever pass the cemetery by that 
road through the swamps and fewer still pause to 
enter the gate and look upon the graves of the 
heroic dead. Such is the irony of war. The great 
war comes in its day; the drums beat and the 
crowds cheer and throw their kisses and strew 
their roses. Then, behind a cloud of yellow dust, 
the soldiers vanish into the black cloud of battle- 
smoke that hovers over the battlefield. When 
that smoke has lifted, mangled, dehumanized 
forms are collected and buried together in long 
rows. White stones are put over the graves and 
a wall is builded around them. A veteran of the 
war is established in the keeper’s house with a 
large book wherein visitors may sign their names. 
Once a year, on Memorial Day, survivors of a 
regiment may meet and an oration is made. Then 


50 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


silence and oblivion for another year. As the. 
years pass, the soldiers’ sacrifice and suffering 
and death are forgotten, despite our eloquent 
periods about the “immortal dead.” So it was 
that this lonely cemetery in the White Oak 
Swamp where McClellan’s lads sleep together 
beneath the live oaks and the pines, was to me a 
symbol of the loneliness, the suffering, the ob- 
scurity and oblivion which overtake the soldier. 
Whenever I hear the martial music and the rat- 
tle of the accoutrements and see the glinting of 
the sun on the cannon and hear the huzzas of the 
multitude or listen to the glowing periods of the 
patriotic orator, I see, as in a vision, that quiet 
little cemetery with the ivy walls sheltering the 
graves yonder in the wilderness. 


Il 
ANTIETAM 
Aw Oxtp MAN’s PROPHECY 


The hill country through which Lee retreated 
after the battle of Gettysburg is of unsurpassed 
beauty and grandeur. There the Blue Ridge 
Mountains, which more than any other chain of 
mountains seem to represent American character 
and life, are to be seen at their best. At the 
point where the railway train commences its 
descent towards Hagerstown one stands in the 
center of a great arena of the Civil War. We 
usually think of Gettysburg as a northern and 
Antietam as a southern battlefield, forgetting that 
not more than fifty miles separates them. Back 
of you is Gettysburg, to the left of you South 
Mountain, the prelude to Antietam, and in the 
plain before you, Hagerstown, the little Antietam 
Creek, the village of Sharpsburg, and in the dis- 
tance, where the Shenandoah and Potomac join 
their waters, quaint old Harper’s Ferry. 

After the rout of Pope’s army at Second Bull 
Run, Lee planned his first invasion of northern 
territory. His plan was much the same as in 
the Gettysburg campaign of the following year: 
to hold communications with Richmond by the 
Shenandoah Valley, threaten Pennsylvania, and 
draw the Army of the Potomac away from its 
base. As the first fruits of the campaign he 
hoped for thousands of recruits the moment the 
Stars and the Bars was unfurled on the soil of 

St 


52 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Maryland. Lee hoped for a victory before the 
national elections, and so confident of success 
was he that he wrote to Jefferson Davis suggest- 
ing that he accompany the army and be ready 
to make proposals for peace and independence 
at the head of a victorious host. In these expec- 
tations Lee was to be bitterly disappointed. The 
ragged, unkempt appearance of his shoeless le- 
gions as they forded the Potomac, singing lustily, 
“Maryland! My Maryland!” was in itself enough 
to keep the prosperous farmers of that state from 
joining such an army. As these tatterdemalion 
soldiers marched past her house, one ardent Con- 
federate sympathizer exclaimed, “God bless your 
dirty, ragged souls!” 

When Lee’s army took up the march from 
Fredericksburg on its way towards Hagerstown, 
it passed the quiet cemetery in Frederick where 
Francis Scott Key, the author of “The Star- 
Spangled Banner,” lay sleeping beneath the Sep- 
tember leaves. We wonder what thoughts passed 
through the minds of Lee and Jackson and other 
of the officers who had served under the old ban- 
ner and had uncovered their heads when the 
stirring hymn was sung. We wonder, when “My 
Maryland!” was on every lip, if in a few hearts 
at least, there was not vibrating the melody of 
the older song. 


"Tis the Star-Spangled Banner; O long may it wave 
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. 


The capital was filled with stragglers and the 
contents of the arsenal were being shipped to 
New York, when a trim-looking officer with a 
yellow sash about his waist rode out to meet the 
dispirited army which was retreating from the 
field of Second Bull Run. The wild cheering 


ANTIETAM a 


which rolled like a wave from regiment to regi- 
ment and from division to division as he rode 
past, told plainly enough that the trim-looking 
officer who had superseded the vainglorious 
Pope was General McClellan. This master or- 
ganizer quickly brought order out of chaos and 
soon had the army ready for the field. In doubt 
as to the purpose of Lee, he marched slowly 
up the north side of the Potomac until, at Fred- 
erick, one of the chances of war gave him full 
information as to the movements of the Con- 
federate Army. There was a strong Union garri- 
son at Harper’s Ferry and also one at Martins- 
burg. These troops not only menaced Lee’s 
communications with the Shenandoah Valley, but 
offered a tempting prize to the Confederate 
leader. Jackson, McLaws and Walker were or- 
dered to capture the garrison at Martinsburg and 
Harper’s Ferry, and then join the main army at 
Hagerstown en route for the Cumberland Valley. 
A copy of these orders had been used as a 
wrapper for a package of tobacco and was found 
at Frederick when the Federal Army entered 
that place. McClellan saw his opportunity to 
crush Lee before the divisions at Harper’s Ferry 
could rejoin him. To this end he advanced over 
the South Mountain, carrying Turner’s Gap and 
Crampton Gap after a spirited resistance. But 
at the same time Harper’s Ferry had capitulated 
and Jackson was hurrying back to join his chief. 
The fact that McClellan knew his position and 
plan of campaign had been revealed to Lee by 
a citizen of Frederick who was at McClellan’s 
headquarters when the dispatch was read and 
had hastened to warn the Confederate leader. 
In the four years of marching and fighting no 
finer piece of military work was done than the 
investment and capture of Harper’s Ferry by 


54 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


‘Stonewall’ Jackson just on the eve of the battle 
of Antietam. When Lee crossed the Potomac 
into Maryland, he expected that Harper’s Ferry, 
garrisoned by 10,000 Federals, would be evacu- 
ated. McClellan suggested this sound measure 
to Halleck, but it was treated with contempt and 
the garrison was left to its fate. Both neces- 
sity and opportunity, therefore, prompted Lee 
to capture the garrison: necessity, because of the 
risk of leaving so large a body in the way of his 
retreat after any movement into Pennsylvania; 
opportunity, because of the tempting prize, more 
than ten thousand troops. Once again, in spite 
of Longstreet’s protest, he decided to risk a divi- 
sion of his army. Jackson was dispatched to take 
Harper’s Ferry, and the rest of the army was put in 
motion for Hagerstown, the gateway to the Cum- 
berland Valley. Jackson was to cross the Poto- 
mac to the west of Harper’s Ferry, capturing or 
driving before him the garrison of three thou- 
sand men at Martinsburg, and then close in on 
Harper’s Ferry from the west, while Walker 
seized Loudon Heights across the Shenandoah 
from Harper’s Ferry, and McLaws, Maryland 
Heights. From either of these eminences artil- 
lery could dominate the Federal position on Boli- 
var Heights, back of Harper’s Ferry. With a 
precision like that of clock work, these move- 
ments were made, and on the morning of the 
fifteenth Harper’s Ferry, hopelessly beleaguered, 
surrendered. 

After McClellan had carried the mountain 
passes, Lee slowly withdrew to the vicinity of 
Sharpsburg. At eight o’clock on the evening of 
the fourteenth Lee ordered one of his divisions 
to withdraw into Virginia, but two hours later 
he changed his mind and decided to make a stand 
at Sharpsburg. With only nineteen thousand 


i i .- 


ANTIETAM 55 


men he turned to face the whole Army of the 
Potomac under its favorite general. In the entire 
military career of Lee he never planned a bolder 
or more hazardous movement. But as we shall 
see, the fortunes of war were with his army. 
Moreover, the high expectations which the South 
entertained for this campaign perhaps induced 
Lee to fight a battle before he withdrew into 
Virginia. Sharpsburg is a straggling little town 
five miles north of the Potomac. A mile or two 
east and north of the town is a range of hills and 
bluffs, at the base of which flows the Antietam 
Creek. Along these hills Lee stationed his army. 
The Antietam was on his front and the Potomac 
six miles in his rear. His position was strong 
for a defensive battle, but exceedingly dangerous 
in the event of defeat. It was against such a 
position that McClellan flung his great army on 
the bloodiest day of the Civil War, September 
17, 1862. 

McClellan might have attacked with the cer- 
tainty of victory on the fifteenth. But his cus- 
tomary caution and habit of exaggerating the 
strength of the army opposed to him kept him 
from striking when he could not have failed, for 
Lee was not joined by Jackson until the morning 
of the sixteenth. As it was, the Union Army 
still vastly outnumbered the Confederate.* Lee 
brought into the fight 39,500 men, McClellan 
78,000. On the afternoon and evening of the 
sixteenth Hooker and Mansfield crossed the An- 
tietam on the Union right, and at six o’clock the 
next morning these troops commenced the san- 
guinary struggle. On this part of the field 

*Stanton, the Secretary of War, commenting on McClel- 
lan’s habit of overestimating the strength of his enemy, de- 
clared that if he had a million men he would swear the enemy 


had two million and would then sit down in the mud and 
holler for another million. 


56 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


honors were even. The Dunkard church in the 
woods was taken by the Federals and then re-. 
taken by Jackson’s men, The most fearful 
slaughter of the day took place in a sunken road- 
way on the Confederate left-center, where the 
men of D. H. Hill and R. H. Anderson lay in- 
trenched in this natural rifle-pit. To this day 
the road is called “Bloody Lane.’ In one part 
of the field a Confederate officer said to an- 
other officer, “Why do you not move that line 
of battle to make it conform to your own?” look- 
ing at a line of men lying in ranks. The answer 
was, ‘““These men are all dead; they are Georgia 
soldiers.” 

The key to the battlefield was the stone bridge 
over the Antietam on the Confederate right. Today 
the bridge is a quiet and peaceful spot where one 
can rest on a summer day and listen to the music 
of the little stream as it babbles over the rocks 
below. But that stream, if it were so minded, 
could tell another story. On the day of the bat- 
tle the bridge was choked with bodies and the 
river beneath flowed crimson to the Potomac. 
While Hooker and Mansfield and Sumner were 
adventuring their lives on the high places of the 
field to the right, Burnside, at eight o’clock in 
the morning, was ordered to carry the bridge. 
It seems that any battle about a bridge is sure 
to live in history; witness Lodi, Bothwell, and 
Horatius. This bridge did not escape such gen- 
erous immortality and is now known as the 
“Burnside Bridge.’’ Four times Burnside and the 
Ninth Corps tried to carry the bridge and four 
times they were driven back. At one o’clock 
they finally succeeded, and at three o’clock Cox 
stormed the hills beyond and drove in the Con- 
federate right. For a few moments it looked like 
a complete overthrow of the Confederate Army. 


IWW.LATUNY A dN Oa Gala 








ANTIETAM 57 


But just as the Confederate right wing was giv- 
ing way, the men of A. P. Hill, marching back 
from the spoils of Harper’s Ferry and clad in the 
blue uniforms they had taken there, came rush- 
ing through the cornfields and drove Burnside’s 
men back to the bridge and saved the day for 
Lee. 

The tide of battle had ebbed and flowed all 
day, and when night put an end to the fight 
neither side could claim the victory. But the 
invasion of the North had been checked with iron 
and blood; and after lying all the next day in 
his lines and waiting for McClellan to attack him 
again, Lee withdrew across the Potomac, taking 
nothing but glory with him and having filled 
far more graves than he had gained recruits. In 
the North the battle was hailed as a victory, and 
Lincoln, keeping his “Covenant with God’—for 
he had promised God that if Lee were driven 
out of Maryland he would crown the result by 
freeing the slaves—saluted the victory with the 
Proclamation of Emancipation. | 

Near Burnside Bridge is the monument of the 
100th Pennsylvania, the famous ‘Roundhead”’ 
regiment, made up of psalm-singing Presbyterians 
of western Pennsylvania. They were the “Iron- 
sides” of the Army of the Potomac and their 
deeds at Antietam will live as long as those of 
Cromwell’s heroes at Naseby and Marston Moor. 
With his rifle across his arm, his back to the 
Antietam, his brow high and lifted up, the bronze 
figure of the “Roundhead” sums up and symbol- 
izes that moral earnestness and faith in God 
which fought the Civil War to a successful issue, 
The Civil War was a soldiers’ war, and as the 
years increase, the fame of commanding officers 
will grow less and less and the fame of the 
private in the ranks will grow apace. The Union 


58 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


was preserved by the undismayed fortitude and 
unshrinking courage of the men in the ranks, 
and of those men the “Roundhead” was a goodly 
type. 

The stone church of the Dunkards, or “foot- 
washers,” was the scene of heavy fighting on the 
Confederate left. There is a strange irony in 
the bitterness of the conflicts of the Civil War 
which raged about country churches—Shiloh, 
Antietam and Salem Church—and some of these 
battles broke the quiet of the Sabbath. This 
little church at Antietam was first used as a 
hospital and then as a morgue. Not far away 
was “Bloody Lane,’ but now, instead of being 
heaped for half a mile with moaning, dying lads 
who had stabbed and hacked each other till they 
could fight no more, it was covered with clover 
and dandelions and wild roses. 


Methinks that never blooms the rose so red 
As where some buried Cesar bled. 


Of all the National cemeteries, I think that at 
Antietam the most beautiful. More dead sleep 
there than at Gettysburg—4,759 in all, and 1,850 
unknown. Eighteen hundred and fifty homes 
North and South waiting anxiously for news from 
the front, looking down the road for the postman 
to see if he would bring them any tidings of 
John or Thomas or Charles or Henry. Days 
passing into weeks, weeks into months, months 
into years. A nameless grave on Antietam’s 
banks, and in thousands of homes and hearts 
a nameless pain. On one stone erected by the 
mourning father and mother of a lad in an Illinois 
cavalry regiment, I saw the legend, “He died in 
the advance.” And with this they comforted 
their broken hearts. There we left them all, 


ANTIETAM 59 


known and unknown, officer and private, brave 
actors who gave all that man can give in a mighty 
adventure of the human spirit. 


Your own proud land’s heroic soil 
Must be your fittest grave. 

She claims from war his richest spoil, 
The ashes of the brave. 


On the days following the battle the friends 
and relatives of the dead and wounded came to 
claim their own. Among these was Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes. In a charming essay, “My Hunt 
After the Captain,” he tells how he came to An- 
tietam to find his wounded son. On the night 
after the battle he received a message, “Wounded 
in the neck, though (or thought) not serious.” 
He left Boston the next morning and came to 
Philadelphia and then by Baltimore as far as 
Frederick City. There he commenced to search 
the churches and barns and houses which were 
full of wounded men. When he reached the vi- 
cinity of the battlefield, he was informed that his 
son had recovered and gone back to Baltimore. 
To Baltimore and Philadelphia the anxious father 
retraced his steps only to find that hope deferred 
maketh the heart sick. Finally, at Harrisburg, 
he boarded a train from Hagerstown filled with 
wounded. In one of the front seats of the first 
car he saw his “Captain.” “How are you, boy?” 
“How are you, dad?’ were the only words of 
their matter-of-fact greeting, but the father con- 
fesses that the heart was saying far different 
words. The “Captain” is now the venerable As- 
sociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
United States. 

Antietam was the high-water mark for one 
day’s carnage during the war. Less than three 


60 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


years before, at Charlestown, Virginia, within 
sound of the guns of Antietam, an old man was 
led down the steps of the jail to be hanged by 
the neck until dead. As he left the prison he 
handed to his guards a last message to his coun- 
trymen: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain 
that the crimes of this guilty land will never be 
purged away but with blood. I had, as I now 
think, vainly flattered myself that without very 
much bloodshed it might be done.” As I leaned 
over the Burnside Bridge and watched the 
shadows of the giant sycamores playing on the 
face of the murmuring stream, my mind ran back 
to that September morning of 1862, when the sun 
had risen upon a peaceful landscape where every 
prospect pleased. The little river flowed quietly 
under its stone bridges, the smoke rose from the 
houses of the thrifty burghers, and the sentient 
fields of corn stood waiting for the reaper’s hand, 
little dreaming that a sterner hand was to garner 
them that day. When the moon came up over 
the distant mountains, it looked down upon an- 
other scene. The rows of corn, swept by the 
sleet of lead, lay prostrate and trampled. The 
trim hedges and fences were broken and scat- 
tered, the orchards were mangled and splintered; 
in the great barns the surgeons with bare and 
bloody arms cut and sawed in the flickering light 
of the lantern, while the cattle looked on with 
dumb awe; and down by the river banks, and in 
the river, and under the bridges, along the roads 
and lanes, in the trampled grain and beneath the 
wounded trees, thousands of young men, most 
of them under twenty-one, lay still and rigid, 
their white faces pleading a mute protest to the 
autumnal moon. Had John Brown’s prophecy 
about the atonement of blood come true? 


IV 
HARPER’S FERRY 
A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS 


When I awoke this morning, I saw from my bed- 
room window the noble gorge of the Potomac, where 
it takes the Shenandoah (Daughter of the Stars) into 
its bosom, and the reinforced river breaks a way for 
itself through the Blue Ridge. Seen by daylight, with 
the smoke from the locomotives rising out of the deep 
valley of the Potomac, with here and there a spiral of 
smoke from the factories of the little town, and the 
bald eagle floating in the empyrean far above Loudon 
Heights; or when “the moon takes up the wondrous 
tale and nightly to the listening earth repeats the 
wonders of her birth,” and the shadows of the great 
hills are reflected in the two rivers, and holy, invio- 
lable, mysterious night casts her spell over the three 
great mountains and the two historic streams, the 
scene is memorable, therapeutic for hurt minds; in- 
structive in patriotism, too, for if you would breathe 
the atmosphere of real America, you must visit the 
Blue Ridge Mountains south of the Potomac. 

I know of just two picturesquely quaint towns on 
this continent. One is Quebec, crowned on her rock 
on the St. Lawrence; the other is Harper’s Ferry. The 
town starts where the two rivers join their waters, and 
works its way up the steep hill towards Bolivar 
Heights. Venerable brick and stone houses, with three 
stories on the down side and two on the side up the 
hill; and on the down side a porch, or “gallery” as 
they call it, and over brick and stone walls the trailing 

61 


62 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


vine or red rose, make you think that you are in an 
ancient English or French town. ‘That impression is 
not lessened when you learn that the chief street which 
takes you up to the heights is called the “High” Street. 
Slowly these fine old houses are giving way to modern 
edifices with garage and garish attendants. ‘Therefore, 
if you would see this quaintest town of America be- 
fore its glory and charm have departed, come now. 
Try it on an October day, when the glow of the golden- 
rod is over the fields and all the mountainsides are 
bright with the brown and scarlet and gold of the 
autumn. 

On a warm July afternoon, in 1859, an old man 
alighted from the Baltimore and Ohio train at Sandy 
Hook, a station on the Maryland side of the Potomac, 
and three miles below Harper’s Ferry. “Isaac Smith,” 
the old man gave as his name and said that he was 
one of a party which was to prospect for minerals. 
He wanted to rent a farm where his party could live 
while carrying on their mining explorations. An 
obliging native took him out the river road to what 
was, and is now called, the Kennedy farm, five miles 
from Harper’s Ferry on the Maryland side. He paid 
thirty-five dollars in cash for the use of the farm from 
July to March. The old man was John Brown, and 
the men who soon gathered from all parts of the coun- 
try were the members of his “Gideon band” of de- 
liverers. 

Oliver Brown, one of the raiders and a son of John 
Brown, a few days before the raid wrote to a friend, 
“Tf we succeed, some day there will be a United States 
flag over this house—if we do not, it will be considered 
a den of land pirates and thieves.’’ One who cares to 
visit that farmhouse might wish that either prophecy 
had come true, for either with a flag on it, or com- 
monly regarded a den of land pirates, it would have 
been easy to find. The place lives neither in glory nor 
in disgrace; it has been forgotten, and only the most 


HARPER S PERRY 63 


careful searching will lead the wanderer to that house 
where John Brown dreamed his strange dream of 
negro emancipation. 

The farm lies in a wilderness back of the Maryland 
Heights. The house is brick below and frame above, 
with a gallery in front. Its situation, a hundred yards 
or more back from the public highway, suited the pur- 
pose of Brown, for the raiders could always see the 
approach of a stranger or visitor, and have time to 
hide in the attic. In this attic they had stored the nine 
hundred pikes and the rifles. A mile from the farm 
is the Dunkard church where John Brown worshipped 
and frequently exhorted. 

It was a Sunday evening in October when, after Bi- 
ble reading and prayer, Brown and his men sallied 
forth from his house and made the attack on the town. 
They first took possession of the railroad bridge and 
then seized the arsenal and the rifle factory. The 
night watchman who took the second turn at the 
bridge, Patrick Higgins, was still living at Sandy 
Hook upon my first visit to Harper’s Ferry, and told 
me a graphic story of the events of that. memorable 
night and the day following. On his head there was 
still to be seen the scar made by a bullet from Oliver 
Brown’s rifle when he ran from the raiders on the 
bridge. 

The news of the attack soon reached Washington 
and steps were taken to protect the government prop- 
erty. Colonel R. E. Lee happened to be at that time 
in Washington on furlough. He was dispatched to 
Harper’s Ferry with a company of marines. He 
reached the town on Tuesday morning and at once 
proceeded to take Brown and his men. The sudden 
attack, the seizing of prominent citizens and holding 
them as hostages, the unknown leader and the igno- 
rance as to the purpose of the conspiracy had thrown 
the whole community into the wildest excitement. 
During the preparations for the assault on the engine 


64 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


house by Lee’s men, one of the negroes with Brown 
leveled his rifle at Colonel Lee and was about to fire 
when one of the hostages warned him to desist, telling 
him that he was about to fire on an officer of the 
United States Army. lLee’s aide was Lieutenant 
J. E. B. Stuart, afterwards the famous cavalry leader. 
When he went with a flag of truce to tell Brown the 
terms of Lee, the old man met him with a cocked car- 
bine. Stuart had seen service on the Kansas frontier 
and at once recognized “Isaac Smith’ as “Osawato- 
mie’ Brown. 

After his capture, marked by brutal and barbarous 
acts on the part of the infuriated townsmen and farm- 
ers, Brown was taken to Charlestown, the county seat 
of Jefferson County. The terrible dread of a servile 
insurrection was in the heart of Virginia, and made 
the conviction and execution of Brown a foregone 
conclusion. Cannon were planted so as to sweep the 
courthouse and militia were parked about the square. 
Found guilty on three counts, conspiracy, treason and 
murder, the stern old Covenanter, still suffering from 
a bayonet stab, was brought in for sentence. When 
asked if he had anything to say, he made an address 
to the Court and the jury which Emerson places next 
to the Gettysburg oration of Lincoln. He concluded 
with these words: “I see a book kissed here which I 
suppose is the Bible, or at least the New Testament. 
That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would 
that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. 
It teaches me further to remember them that are in 
bonds as bound with them. I say, I am yet too young 
to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I 
believe that to have interfered as I have done—in be- 
half of His despised poor was not wrong but right. 
Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my 
life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and 
mingle my blood further with the blood of my children 
and with the blood of millions in this slave country 


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HARPER’S FERRY | 65 


whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and 
unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be.” 

In one of the last méssages which he sent the night 
before he died, Brown had written: “I have asked to 
be spared from having any mock or hypocritical pray- 
ers made over me, when I am publicly murdered; and 
that my only religious attendants be poor, little, dirty, 
ragged, bareheaded, and barefooted slave boys and 
girls led by some old grayheaded slave mother.” Per- 
haps suggested by this last request, a familiar painting 
has given currency to a pretty legend which sprang 
up after the execution of Brown, about his taking a 
negro baby out of its mother’s arms and kissing it as 
he was on his way to the gallows. But in that day of 
tense excitement and dread foreboding, it is unlikely 
that any negro would have ventured near the scene of 
execution. As he rode in a spring wagon with his 
own coffin, Brown said to the men who were to do 
him to death: “This is a beautiful country. I have 
never noticed it before.”’ This was as near to an ex- 
pression of desire for more of the sweet liberty of life 
as the doomed man permitted himself to come. The 
day before his execution Brown was visited by his 
wife, Mary. Only for a moment or two when they 
first met did either husband or wife give way to 
grief. Gravely they talked together concerning the 
education of the soon-to-be-fatherless children, spoke 
contentedly of the coming event, and then parted for 
this world. Mrs. Brown was driven back to Harper’s 
Ferry, and there in the little hotel, mourning for her 
sons because they were not, and refusing to be com- 
forted, she waited until the word came that Virginia 
was through with John Brown and that she might now 
have his lifeless body. 

Among the militia martialed about the gallows, lest 
the spirit of the mountains should come suddenly down 
and liberate him, were two other men whose names will 
live as long as that of the abolitionist himself. One 


66 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


was John Wilkes Booth. The other was “Stonewall” 
Jackson, who had come up with a company of cadets 
from the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington. In 
a letter to his wife, Jackson thus describes the scene: 


“December 2d. John Brown was hung today at about 
half-past eleven. He behaved with unflinching firmness. 
The arrangements were well made and well executed under 
the direction of Colonel Smith. The gibbet was erected 
in a large field south of the town. Brown rode on the 
head of his coffin from his prison to the place of execution. 
The coffin was of black walnut, enclosed in a box of 
poplar of the same shape as the coffin. He was dressed in 
a black frock coat, black pantaloons, black vest, black 
slouch hat, white socks and slippers of predominating red. 
There was nothing round his neck but his shirt collar. The 
open wagon in which he rode was strongly guarded on all 
sides. Capt. Williams marched immediately in front of 
the wagon. The jailer, high sheriff, and several others 
rode in the same wagon with the prisoner. Brown had 
his arms tied behind him, and ascended the scaffold with 
apparent cheerfulness. After reaching the top of the plat- 
form, he shook hands with several who were standing 
round him. The sheriff placed the rope around his neck, 
then threw a white cap over his head, and asked him if he 
wished a signal when all should be ready. He replied 
that it made no difference, provided he was not kept wait- 
ing too long. In this condition he stood for about ten 
minutes on the trapdoor. Colonel Smith then announced 
to the sheriff ‘all ready —which apparently was not com- 
prehended by him, and the colonel had to repeat the order, 
when the rope was cut by a single blow and Brown fell 
through about five inches, his knees falling on a level with 
the position occupied by his feet before the rope was cut. 
There was very little motion of his person for several 
moments, and soon the wind blew his lifeless body to and 
fro. Altogether it was a very solemn scene. I was much 
impressed with the thought that before me stood a man 
in the full vigor of health, who must, in a few minutes, 
enter eternity. I sent up a petition that he might be saved. 
I hope he was prepared to die, but I am doubtful.” 


HARPER SUP RNY 67 


“And soon the wind blew his lifeless body to and 
fro.” “Stonewall” Jackson saw that much. Was he 
able to see more than that? Was he able to see the 
winds blowing, not his lifeless body, but his living 
spirit to and fro over the earth long after the body 
was mouldering in the grave? In a minute or two it 
was allover. Just an old man hanging at a rope’s end, 
a fool—so they said—dying as the fool dieth, just a 
speck of black in the bright December sunlight, with 
the song of the Shenandoah in the distance, and far 
beyond, the eternal blue of the mountains. But here 
was a scaffold that swayed the future. Not John 
Brown, but negro slavery was hanged that day: and 
so it came about that the dead that he slew at his 
death were more than they that he slew in his life. 
Neither saint nor fool, John Brown was a prophet of 
national repentance. All that he predicted came true, 
and all that he had advocated was put into effect 
within three years. “Who art thou?” we ask the hills 
and rivers where he planned and fought and suffered 
death. And back from the hills of the Shenandoah 
and Potomac there comes an answer, “I am the voice 
of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the Way 
of the Lord.” 


V 
THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY 
A PATHWAY TO A SHRINE 


With a river to make it glad and a chain of moun- 
tains on the right hand and on the left, the Valley of 
Virginia, as the Plain which tempted Lot, is well 
watered, like the Garden of the Lord. There may be 
valleys which are deeper and hills which are steeper, 
but no valley in all the land where the charm of field 
and stream and hill is so closely woven with the 
romance of stirring history. The gateway to the 
Valley is Harper’s Ferry, and Harper’s Ferry a gate- 
way to Washington. These facts are sufficient reason 
for the important part played by the Shenandoah 
Valley in the Civil War. No territory in all the area 
of war was so battle-ridden as this narrow strip of 
country between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies. 
Its great fertility and its geographical importance as an 
approach to Washington and a back door to Richmond 
made its possession of vital interest to North and 
South. 

Leaving Harper’s Ferry, the old stage road leads 
first to Halltown, for a time the headquarters of 
Sheridan, and then to Charlestown, where John Brown 
was tried and hanged. The jail in which Brown was 
incarcerated still stands. It is directly opposite the 
Courthouse, and if one may believe the local testi- 
mony, whenever the snow falls in Charlestown, al- 
though the street be deep with it, it will melt on the 
path across the street which was taken by Brown as 
he went from the jail to the Courthouse during his 

68 


THE SHENANDOAH 69 


trial. From Charlestown the road leads down the 
valley through rolling, fertile fields and past well-kept, 
prosperous-looking farm buildings until Winchester is 
reached. As one rides along, it is not difficult to 
imagine that one can hear the clatter of the hoofs of 
Mosby and Ashby, or to see the farms and mills 
aflame with the torch of Sheridan and Hunter. This 
section of the arena of the Civil War furnished more 
raids and surprises, midnight cries and alarms, cap- 
tures and escapes, more love affairs between Federal 
officers and southern belles, in short, more of the 
romance of the war than any other section. General 
Charles Lee, of Monmouth notoriety, came down into 
this section to live after he had been cashiered from 
Washington’s army. He built a stone house at what is 
now called Leetown. Instead of conventional walls and 
partitions, he chalk marked the different chambers on 
the floor. Here, surrounded by a company of dogs, he 
spent his last years. He left a remarkable will filed 
with the clerk of Berkeley County. It is as follows: 
“T desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in 
any church or churchyard, or within a mile of any 
Presbyterian or Anabaptist meeting-house; for since 
I have resided in this county, I have kept so much 
bad company when living that I do not desire to con- 
tinue it when dead.” 

Winchester, the most important town in the north- 
ern valley, was a fickle place during the war, changing 
hands seventy-two times. But as the oldest town south 
of the Potomac and west of the Blue Ridge, it has 
other memories than those of the Civil War. It was 
from Winchester that Braddock and Washington set 
out in 1754 on their ill-starred expedition against Fort 
Duquesne, and after the slaughter, Washington fell 
back again to Winchester. In the early part of the 
Civil War, Jackson had headquarters at Winchester, he 
and his wife living with the pastor of the Presbyterian 
church, the Reverend Dr. Graham. 


70 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


A few blocks from the Presbyterian manse is the 
comfortable mansion from which General Sheridan 
started on his famous ride to stem the rout of his 
army at Cedar Creek. The natives of Winchester 
declare that Buchanan’s poem was much more famous 
than Sheridan’s ride. But, however that may have 
been, that nineteenth of October saw the finish of Jubal 
Early, the man who gave Washington such a scare and 
burned Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. After the de- 
feat of Early at Winchester, September 19, 1864, 
Sheridan established headquarters at Cedar Creek, 
twenty miles from Winchester. On the seventeenth 
of October he went to Washington for a conference 
with the War Department. The day before, the Union 
signal officers had intercepted a message as it was 
being flagged from Longstreet to Early. It read: “Be 
ready to move as soon as my forces join you, and we 
will crush Sheridan.” This message afterwards proved 
to be ficticious, but it caused Sheridan to hurry back 
from Washington. He returned on the evening of 
the eighteenth and spent the night in the Logan house 
at the headquarters of Colonel Edwards. At six 
o'clock the next morning his aide awakened him and 
reported heavy firing in the direction of Cedar Creek. 
At first Sheridan thought it was only a reconnoissance 
by the officer in command. But as the firing increased 
in volume he became uneasy, and calling his horse, 
mounted and rode off down the street. As he passed 
through the streets of the town women appeared at 
the doors and windows, shaking their hoop skirts and 
making gestures of scorn and contempt. This further 
increased the anxiety of Sheridan, for it was evident 
that the women had received good news over the 
“grapevine” telegraph. As he rode along he put his 
head down to the pommel to listen to the firing and 
quickly came to the conclusion that his army was being 
driven back. When he reached the top of a hill beyond 
Mill Creek he met the streaming rout of his broken 


THE SHENANDOAH 71 


army. He ordered Colonel Edwards to draw a line of 
soldiers across the roads leading to Winchester and 
stop all fugitives, and then putting spurs to “Rienzt”’ 
rode furiously to the front. 

General Wright had already formed a new line of 
battle while the Confederates were pillaging the Fed- 
eral Camp, and the presence of Sheridan was all that 
was necessary to turn the tide of battle. With hat in 
hand, he rode up and down his lines evoking the wildest 
enthusiasm wherever he appeared. ‘Torbet cried, “My 
God! I’m glad you have come back!” And Custer 
rode to his side and threw his arms about his neck 
and embraced him. Ina few minutes defeat had been 
turned into victory and Early’s army was practically 
annihilated. 

Among the officers who fell on the Union side was 
Colonel James Russell Lowell, a nephew of James Rus- 
sell Lowell, who had married Josephine Shaw, the sis- 
ter of Colonel R. G. Shaw, who fell at the head of his 
negro troops at Fort Wagner and whose noble me- 
morial now stands on Boston Common. 

There is a national cemetery for the Union dead at 
Winchester and one for the Confederate. One monu- 
ment tells the Southern side of the war: “In memory 
of 398 Virginia soldiers lying in this cemetery who 
fell in defense of constitutional liberty and the 
sovereignty of the state.” The monument is crowned 
by the figure of a Confederate soldier, leaning upon 
his musket, and his head, not defiantly lifted, but 
humbly and sadly bowed. Always sadly looking down, 
these figures in gray which one encounters all through 
the South. They express the pathos of the lost cause. 
Another monument bears this legend: 


To the Unknown Dead 
Who they were, none knows— 
What they were, all know. 


72 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


There was the music of the whetstone in the land. 
I followed it until I came upon the grizzled old care- 
taker sharpening his scythe. He looked like Father 
Time himself. I asked him what graves of interest 
there might be in the cemetery. He named several 
and concluded by lifting his hand and pointing with 
the whetstone, saying, “Over yonder is the Ashbys.”’ 
My response was as unfortunate as spontaneous, 
“Ashby the guerrilla?’ I saw at once that I had made 
a mistake, as a look of pain and anger spread over 
the veteran’s face, and I feared for a moment that he 
would hew me in pieces like Agag, for he was of those 
who had ridden by the side of the dashing horsemen; 
and now, in his old age, he keeps their grave. I 
quoted Sheridan’s memoirs as authority for the mili- 
tary classification of the Ashby brothers, whereupon 
our veteran spat on his hands, and bending to his task, 
said, “Ashby was a better soldier than Sheridan ever 
tried to be.” The younger of the brothers, Richard 
Ashby, was killed early in the war, and the remaining 
brother waged war as a fierce revenge for his brother’s 
death. In the older part of the cemetery is a flat slab, 
cracked and disfigured with age, and on it I made out 
a name which recalled the heights of Saratoga and 
the wilderness of the Cowpens—Daniel Morgan, of 
the Revolutionary Army. 

At the head of the valley is the Natural Bridge, 
where the national road crosses from one ridge of 
hills to another. ‘“God’s greatest miracle in stone,” 
Chief Justice Marshall called it; and certainly nature 
has wrought few works that are mightier or more im- 
pressive. On one of the limestone walls under the 
bridge the guide points out a possible “G. W.,” where 
the Father of His Country foretold his fame by carv- 
ing his name higher than anyone else. In this respect 
the name of his children is legion, for the walls now 
are covered with names and dates spelled by muses, 
both lettered and unlettered. The natural bridge and 


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THE SHENANDOAH 73 


the land about it was part of an estate which fell to 
Thomas Jefferson when he married the widow Skel- 
ton. He greatly admired the bridge and the country 
around, and had planned for a home and retreat in 
the vicinity. The wonderful arch has been described 
many times by painters and narrators and scientists, 
but never better than by its earthly owner himself, 
where he writes in the Notes on Virgima: “The nat- 
ural bridge is the most sublime of nature’s works. It 
is impossible for the emotions arising from the sublime 
to be felt beyond what they are here; so beautiful an 
arch, so elevated, so light, and springing, as it were 
up to heaven! The rapture of the spectator is really 
indescribable.” 

Fifteen miles over the hills from Natural Bridge lies 
Lexington. The sun was sinking behind the Blue 
Ridge on a September day in 1865, when a stout gray 
horse climbed the steep road leading to Lexington and 
bore his rider to the village inn. Here and there, as he 
passed down the street, a few citizens and veterans 
of the war saw the horse and his rider and lifted their 
hats. The horse was “Traveler’’ and the rider, Robert 
FE. Lee. The unattended ride into the mountain village 
marked the beginning of the last and noblest chapter 
in Lee’s career. An English nobleman had proffered 
him an estate with a pension in England, and insur- 
ance companies had offered him fabulous sums for the 
use of his name. The trustees of the Presbyterian 
College at Lexington borrowed a suit of broadcloth 
from a local judge, dressed one of their number in 
the garments, and sent him off to Richmond to offer 
Lee the presidency of Washington College at a salary 
of fifteen hundred dollars a year. This was the offer 
Lee accepted. The last years of his life were devoted 
to the Christian education of the young men of the 
South. The great genius and captain of the war had 
come to take captivity captive by stooping to the school- 
master’s task. 


74 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


One such example is worth more to earth, 
Than the stained triumphs of ten thousand Cesars. 


A little beyond the campus of Washington and Lee 
University is the Virginia Military Institute where 
Jackson was a professor when the war broke out, and 
where many of the officers of the Confederate armies 
were trained. At the other end of the town is the 
cemetery where Jackson and Pendleton lie buried. 
Pendleton was Lee’s chief of artillery, and after the 
war he went back to his old calling of the ministry and 
became rector of the church where Lee worshipped in 
Lexington. The last public act of Lee was to move at 
a meeting of the vestry an increase in the salary of 
his old comrade-in-arms, and now his pastor. When 
Jackson lay dying after Chancellorsville he asked that 
he be laid in the Valley of Virginia. His monument 
shows him with his hand on his sword, looking off 
towards the east as if about to give an order for one 
of his turning movements. This mountain town ought 
to be proud of its tombs, for it guards the ashes of 
both Lee and Jackson. Lexington is the pantheon of 
the Confederacy. Lee is buried beneath the chapel 
of the college he served, and over his grave is the 
beautiful creation of Valentine which represents him 
asleep on the field of battle. There, in the high places 
of Virginia, where the South may warm herself at 
their memory, let these great captains rest. “They 
were swifter than eagles; they were stronger than lions. 
They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in 
their death they are not divided.” 


VI 
FORT DONELSON 
Tue Man or DESTINY 


Crushing in his hand a bundle of dispatches, the 
commanding general said to his officers who had just 
brought him tidings of the disaster which had befallen 
the Union lines before Fort Donelson: ‘“‘Gentlemen, 
the position on the right must be retaken.” That 
sentence made Grant. Had he faltered or hesitated 
then, the country would never have heard of him. 

On a May day in 1861, after a crowd of loyal citt- 
zens had pulled down the Confederate flag from a 
building in St. Louis, a young man stepped on to a 
street car and, addressing a man at his side, said: 
“Things have come to a damned pretty pass when a 
free people can’t choose their own flag. Where I 
came from, if a man dares to say a word in favor of 
the Union, we hang him to a limb of the first tree we 
come to.” To this the man thus addressed, who hap- 
pened to be a leather dealer’s clerk, quietly responded: 
“After all, we are not so intolerant in St. Louis as we 
might be. I have not seen a single rebel hung yet, nor 
heard of one. There are plenty of them who ought to 
be, however.” 

Within less than a year this ordinary-looking leather 
dealer’s clerk, who had failed in the regular army, 
failed as a farmer and a real estate dealer and had 
finally been given a place in his father’s tannery at 
Galena, Illinois, struck the first hard blow at the Con- 
federacy, and men, playing with the initials of his 
name, were calling him ‘Unconditional Surrender 
Grant” and hailing him as the Man of Destiny. 

75 


76 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


In order to hold the two great rivers, the Tennessee 
and the Cumberland, which constituted natural avenues 
for invading the Confederacy, the southern military 
authorities had built Fort Henry on the Tennessee and 
Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, both in the state 
of Tennessee and only a few miles apart. Fort Henry 
fell before the guns of the river flotilla under Flag 
Officer Foote, and most of the garrison escaped to 
Fort Donelson, twelve miles distant. Grant then 
turned immediately against Donelson, now strongly 
reinforced by twelve thousand men from Albert Sid- 
ney Johnston’s army at Nashville. The garrison at 
Donelson was under the command of General Floyd, 
who had been Secretary of War under Buchanan and 
was responsible for the sending of government stores 
to southern arsenals just prior to the outbreak of the 
war. Under him was Pillow, a veteran of the Mexican 
War, and Buckner, an able and professional soldier. 

Colonel John S. Mosby thus comments on the move- 
ments which led to the surrender of Fort Donelson: 
“A greater blunder was never committed in war than 
when General Albert Sidney Johnston sent Floyd, 
Buckner and Pillow down the Cumberland River with 
about seventeen thousand troops to hold a fort situated 
in the angle made by the confluence of the Cumberland 
and a deep, unfordable creek. There was no line of 
retreat open by land or transportation provided for 
escape by water, in case of defeat. The Confederates 
were caught in a trap and their surrender was, of 
course, inevitable.” 

It was a bright April Sunday morning when, stand- 
ing on the deck of the steamboat, we caught sight of 
the Stars and Stripes floating over the trees on a high 
bluff on the left bank of the Cumberland River. The 
flag told us that we were nearing our destination, Fort 
Donelson, the place where fifty years before Grant 
dealt the Confederacy its first staggering blow. I have 
seen the flag on the high seas and waving from our 


—_— So 


FORT DONELSON 77 


consulates in strange lands, or draped as a funeral pall 
for the dead veteran; but never did the flag so touch 
me with its sacred symbolism as it did that Sabbath 
morning when I saw it waving in the wilderness over 
Fort Donelson, guarding a few nameless graves of 
lads from Wisconsin and Indiana and Illinois, who 
there adventured their lives on the high places of the 
field. 

What a strange backwash of civilization! 
Dover is a county seat and in the midst of the 
Square stood the courthouse, a little brick build- 
ing with white trimmings and green shutters. 
Neither the officers of the law nor its victims 
were anywhere in evidence. Through a yellow 
clay street, past unpainted cottages, and around 
droves of swine that seemed to hold undisputed 
sway on the highways, we walked along till we 
came to a small, one-story building which had 
a doctor’s sign over it. We entered and found 
the physician blacking his boots preparatory to 
setting out on his calls. His office was a strange 
litter of books, bottles, drugs, whips, and robes. 
The roads were so heavy that he had to walk 
instead of drive. When I thought of the roads I 
wondered why he blacked his boots so carefully. 
His call took him in the direction of the fort, and 
with him as guide we set out. The rise of the 
river had flooded the country all about Dover 
and a by no means despicable lake of yellow water 
lay between us and the hill upon which had stood 
the main fortifications. One of the natives who 
lived near the ravine hallooed for us, and soon a 
boy in a flatboat put off from the other side. It 
was not much of a boat but it carried us across 
in safety. Then by cautious climbing of barbed- 
wire fences and careful avoidance of the road, we 
made our way to the top of the high hill where 


78 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


the Confederate works had been laid out, and still 
can readily be traced. 

There had been batteries on the top of the hill 
and also on the water level below. On the morn- 
ing of the fourteenth of February, 1862, Foote, 
flushed with the easy victory at Henry, opened 
fire with his gunboats. But this time it was more 
serious business. Within two hours every gun- 
boat was disabled, fifty-four men had been killed, 
and Foote himself badly wounded. The fleet 
dropped down the river for repairs, and the army 
was apparently face to face with a long siege. 
During the night it had suddenly turned bitterly 
cold. On the march from Fort Henry many of 
the raw troops had thrown away their blankets, 
and as they lay on the frozen ground, unable to 
build fires because of the enemy’s guns, the men 
suffered intensely. “The sun went down,” says 
General Grant, “leaving the army confronting 
Fort Donelson anything but comforted over its 
prospects.” But the Confederates were not elated 
by their repulse of the fleet. At a council of war 
it was decided to attack the Union right and clear 
the road to Nashville, so that the garrison might 
withdraw. On the morning of the fifteenth a 
fierce attack was made on McClernand on the 
Union right, and his division was driven back, 
together with a part of the troops under Lew 
Wallace. By one o’clock the road to Nashville 
was open. But by an extraordinary blunder the 
Confederate troops, instead of setting out for 
Nashville, were held in their lines. 

At this critical juncture Grant was several miles 
down the river conferring with Foote on his flag- 
ship. When he landed from the cutter, one of 
his staff, his face white with fear, told him of the 
disaster that had befallen his army. As fast as 
his horse could carry him over the rough, frozen 


FORT DONELSON 79 


roads Grant galloped to the front. This was a 
real crisis in his career. He met it as he met 
every other emergency, with coolness and deter- 
mination. “A mediocre person would have taken 
the repulse as another argument for entering 
upon a siege. Had Grant done so, it is very 
probable his career would have been then and 
there concluded.” In the lull of the battle Grant 
saw the chance for victory. To one of his staff, 
Colonel Webster, he said, ““The one who attacks 
first now will be victorious, and the enemy will 
have to be in a hurry if he gets ahead of me.” To 
Wallace and McClernand, as they told him of the 
defeat, he merely said, “Gentlemen, the position 
on the right must be retaken.” In a short time 
the veteran commander, Smith, was leading a 
charge which drove the Confederates into their 
works and sealed the doom of the fort. At a 
council that night Floyd turned the command 
over to Pillow, who gave it to Buckner. Floyd 
had good reasons for not wanting to fall into the 
hands of the United States authorities, as it was 
during his term as Secretary of War that great 
quantities of arms had been removed from North- 
ern to Southern arsenals and every means taken 
to cripple the Government and aid the coming 
Confederacy. Very likely he would have been 
tried for treason. 

Nathaniel Forrest refused to surrender, and 
with his troopers cut his way out in the night by 
riding through the ice of the backwash of the 
river near Dover. Forrest is ranked by many 
military writers as the greatest natural cavalry 
leader of the war. He always led his own men, 
and fought like a demon. If he had had the advan- 
tages of education his achievements would have been 
even greater. His maxim of war was “to git thar 
fustest with the mostest men.” He generally 


80 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


succeeded. On one occasion a loquacious widow 
asked him how it was that his beard was black 
but his hair was gray. He replied that it must 
have been because he used his brains more than 
he did his jaw. Towards the close of the war he 
was engaged in a desperate personal encounter 
with an officer whom he had reduced in rank. The 
officer shot him, inflicting a dangerous wound, 
but Forrest with wonderful grit and furious 
passion stabbed him to death with a penknife. 
Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku 
Klux Klan, which was organized at Pulaski, 
Tennessee, in 1865, and was designed to relieve 
the white population of the South from the domi- 
nation of negroes and carpetbaggers. The Ku 
Klux Klan of our day has adopted the name and 
revived some of the terrors of the original Klan. 

Pillow and Floyd, together with some Vir- 
ginia troops, escaped across the river, and to the 
gallant Simon Bolivar Buckner fell the unhappy task of 
surrender. The last time Grant and Buckner had 
met was in the Mexican War when they made an 
ascent of Popocatepetl. To his inquiry for terms 
Grant sent back the famous answer: “No terms 
except an unconditional and immediate surrender 
can be accepted.” The formal surrender took 
place in the hotel at Dover which had been the 
headquarters of Buckner. Lew Wallace was the 
representative of Grant. By the surrender the 
South lost more than 12,000 soldiers, forty guns, 
and stores of ammunition. It was the first time 
that the iron entered into the soul of the South, 
and for the first time the North “saw daylight” 
in the war. In the interview at the Dover tavern, 
one of Buckner’s staff, Tom Clay, a grandson of 
Henry Clay, took Wallace’s hand and cried like 
a child. Wallace started to say something about 
the “old Flag,” when Buckner, bringing his fist 


FORT DONELSON 81 


down on the table, exclaimed, “The old Flag! I 
followed it when most of your thousands out 
yonder were in swaddling clothes—in Mexico, on 
the frontier—and I love it yet.” 

Donelson made Grant a major-general of volun- 
teers. “Out of the clouds of smoke that settled 
down upon that fatal field where friend and foe 
alike lay frozen and stiff with the agony of death 
in every feature, there rose to the horizon one 
star of destiny.” We shall next meet him in a 
forest solitude on the banks of the Tennessee, 
again undismayed by apparent disaster, and by 
his cool determination turning defeat into victory. 


VII 
SHILOH 
A Nation Drinxs Its Cup 


A great river flowing silently away, a raft of 
logs and a steamboat, with its towering black 
stacks, lying at the landing; deep ravines with 
brooks hurrying towards the river, green hillsides, 
and, here and there, granite monuments appear- 
ing through the trees, the leaves of which were 
stirring at the breath of the soft April wind—this 
is Shiloh. 

Soon after the fall of Fort Donelson the Union 
Army began to move south by way of the Ten- 
nessee River, its object being the Confederate 
army, under Albert Sidney Johnston, at Corinth, 
Mississippi. Grant had been relieved of his com- 
mand by the unspeakable Halleck, and the vet- 
eran C. F. Smith was put in charge of the ex- 
pedition up the Tennessee River with Johnston’s 
army as an objective. Smith chose for his camp 
a site on the west side of the Tennessee River, at 
Pittsburgh Landing, also known as Shiloh, a stop- 
ping place for steamers and about twenty miles 
north of Corinth. The position was a strong one, 
being protected on both flanks by deep ravines, 
at that time filled with the backwash of the river. 
But in the event of a defeat it would have been 
almost impossible to withdraw the army, for the 
river was too high for a bridge. But Smith was 
not destined to lead in the great battle that was 
imminent. As he was leaving the headquarters 


SHILOH 83 


of Lew Wallace on a steamboat, February 16th, 
he missed his footing and scraped his leg against 
the sharp edge of the seat of the yawl. On his 
return to Savannah he took to his bed in the 
Mhetrys rouse, and never (lett,it) > Grant): once 
more in favor with Halleck, was restored to com- 
mand. He maintained his army at Pittsburgh 
Landing, the site chosen by Smith, and established 
his headquarters at Savannah, nine miles down 
the river and on the east bank. 

On the fifteenth of March, General Buell, com- 
manding his splendidly drilled Army of the 
Ohio, commenced his march from Nashville to 
join Grant on the Tennessee, the combined armies 
then to take the field against Johnston. Johnston, 
gathering his strength at Corinth, determined to 
strike Grant before Buell could join him, drive 
him into the Tennessee River, and then crush 
Buell. It was a bold design and fell just short 
of its execution. The mistake Johnston made was 
in waiting too long, so that Buell had time to get 
up; or in not waiting a little longer, when he him- 
self would have been heavily reinforced by the 
army under Van Dorn. 

It is generally conceded that at Shiloh Grant 
violated almost every well-known maxim of war 
but that of hard fighting. He played the part of 
a brave and undaunted man when the storm 
broke upon him, but it was only by good fortune 
that he failed to reap the disastrous fruits of care- 
lessness and neglect. What this carelessness was 
is best summed up in the words of General Buell: 
“An army comprising 70 regiments of infantry, 
20 batteries of artillery, and a sufficiency of 
cavalry, lay for two weeks and more in isolated 
camps, with a river in its rear and a hostile army 
claimed to be superior in numbers 20 miles away 
on its front, while the commander made his head- 


84 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


quarters and passed his nights nine miles away 
on the opposite side of the river. It had no line 
of battle, no defensive works of any sort, no out- 
posts, properly speaking, to give warning, or 
check the advance of an enemy, and no recognized 
head during the absence of the regular com- 
mander. On a Saturday the hostile force arrived 
and formed in order of battle, without detection 
or hindrance, within a mile and a half of the un- 
guarded army.” The plain fact is that a large 
Union army was placed in grave jeopardy through 
the fault of its commander. Only a presupposi- 
tion that Grant and Sherman were incapable of 
blundering could lead to any other conclusion. 
Both Grant and Sherman excused themselves on 
the ground that their troops were raw and needed 
drill more than digging, and that, as it was an 
offensive campaign, entrenchments would have 
made the army timid. 

To get to the field of Shiloh we had to go to 
Memphis and there take the train to Corinth, 
in Mississippi. When we asked the hotel clerk 
at Corinth if it were not possible to get.to Shiloh 
by automobile, he shook his head and smiled. We 
soon learned why he smiled. We secured a 
double-seated wagon and two stout horses and 
set out about midday on the twenty-mile drive to 
Shiloh. When about three miles from the town 
I said to the driver, “These roads are not so bad. 
I have seen worse in Pennsylvania.” But the 
words were hardly out of my mouth when the 
horses plunged belly-deep in the mud and the 
yellow sea washed against the dashboard. From 
there on for more than fifteen miles it was one 
continuous wallow in the mire. The wonder was 
that the horses ever got through or that the wagon 
stood the strain. Here and there we came upon 
a farmer’s stalled wagon with all the mule teams 


ls BAAC Ne! 85 


in the immediate vicinity assisting to drag it out 
of the muddy abyss. It was not a road; it was 
the Slough of Despond. One could easily under- 
stand why it was that Johnston was a day late in 
getting up his army for the attack. As we pitched 
and floundered about we fancied we could see 
the long teams of mules dragging the Confederate 
artillery through the mire. 

It was a poor cotton belt that we drove 
through, and the houses were wretched, un- 
painted shacks, set up on blocks to preserve them 
from the damp. Fifty years have wrought no 
change in that part of Tennessee and Mississippi, 
and the whole landscape impressed one as the 
abomination of desolation. Most of the farmers 
who had to go to town rode on mules. At one 
crossroads store we saw a man building a fire 
under a mule’s nostrils, evidently to cure him of 
the distemper or other malady. Towards evening 
the country became more hilly and a long line of 
wooded hills told us where the Tennessee flowed 
towards the Ohio. In the gathering shadows we 
came upon a little clearing in the forest where 
there stood a white, frame meeting-house. This 
was Shiloh. Shiloh was its name, and Shiloh, 
peace, it was, in the soft spring evening. Here, 
half a century ago, in the gray dawn of the Sab- 
bath moring, the van of the Confederate army 
burst like a storm cloud on the division of 
Sherman. 

The Army of the Tennessee numbered 47,000 
men and lay with its left wing resting on the 
Tennessee River, two miles below Pittsburgh 
Landing, and its right on Owl Creek, three miles 
west of the river. The line of battle faced west 
and south; three brigades of Sherman on the 
right near Shiloh Church; Prentiss in the center 
one-half mile from Sherman; McClernand, a 


86 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


political soldier, behind Sherman; Hurlburt be- 
hind Prentiss, and behind Hurlburt, W. H. L. - 
Wallace. The field of battle consisted of heavily 
wooded sections, with here and there a clearing, 
and intersected by deep ravines. The veteran 
division of Lew Wallace was at Crump’s Landing, 
five miles from Pittsburgh and on the same side 
of the river. The Army of the Ohio, under Buell, 
then marching in the direction of Savannah, num- 
bered 37,000 men. The Confederate army num- 
bered 40,000 men and 100 guns. It was divided 
into three corps under command of Bragg, Polk, 
and Hardee, and a reserve division of infantry 
under Breckenridge, who had been Vice-President 
with Buchanan. Beauregard, the victor at Bull 
Run, was second in command, and seems to have 
had general supervision of the fighting on the 
Confederate side. The original plan was to turn 
the Union left so as to cut the Union army off 
from the Tennessee and force it back upon Owl 
Creek. This plan was not carried out, for the 
Confederate attack spent itself in the effort 
against the Union center and right. In the orders 
issued to his army at Corinth, April 3rd, General 
Johnston said, “You can but march to a decisive 
victory over agrarian mercenaries sent to subju- 
gate and despoil you of your liberties, property 
and honor.” Because of the terrible condition of 
the roads the army did not get within striking 
distance of Shiloh until the evening of the fifth, 
Saturday. At a council Beauregard advised giv- 
ing up the assault and retiring to Corinth. But 
Johnston was determined to fight. 

During these days there had been constant 
skirmishing at the front, but the Federal com- 
manders seem to have had no intimation that a 
great army was stealthily closing in upon them. 
On Friday evening, the fourth, Grant was trying 


SHILOH 87 


to make his way to the front where he had heard 
firing, when his horse fell with him, severely in- 
juring his ankle, so that during the battle he was 
able to walk only with the aid of crutches. On 
Saturday evening, with the whole Confederate 
army hidden in the forests less than two miles 
distant, Grant went back to his quarters at 
Savannah, where the van of Buell’s army, march- 
ing from Nashville, was already appearing. 

He rose for an early breakfast on Sunday morn- 
ing, expecting to ride out and meet Buell. But 
in the midst of his breakfast he heard the thunder 
of the guns nine miles distant at Shiloh, for John- 
ston was up before him. Instead of waiting to 
meet Buell, Grant boarded the dispatch boat Tigress, 
which always had steam up, and started for the 
scene of action. On the way up the river he ran 
close to Crump’s Landing and directed Lew 
Wallace to get his troops under arms and ready 
for marching orders. When Grant reached the 
field there was little for him to do but ride from 
one division commander to another, giving them 
what encouragement he could. 

The Confederate attack began early on the 
sixth. After the dreary rains of the past few 
days the sun rose bright and clear. The Con- 
federates hailed it as the “sun of Austerlitz.” As 
General Johnston mounted his horse he turned 
to his staff and said, “Tonight we will water our 
horses in the Tennessee River!” The first in- 
timation the Union forces had of the attack was 
when the startled rabbits and forest folk came 
rushing on before the crest of the Confederate 
wave. The shock of the first attack fell on Sher- 
man near the meeting-house. His men fought 
bravely, but were pushed back into the lines of 
McClernand, and for the rest of the day Sherman 
and McClernand fought together. Sherman was 


88 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


twice wounded and a bullet passed through his 
hat. At sunset the forces of these generals were 
drawn up on the eighth position they had occu- 
pied that day. 

Grant arrived on the scene at eight o’clock 
when the battle was at its fiercest. He sent an 
urgent appeal to Buell, saying that if he could 
get his troops across the river the day might be 
saved. A message was dispatched to Lew Wal- 
lace ordering him to bring his division to the 
front at once. By some misunderstanding Wal- 
lace took the wrong road and his troops had to 
be countermarched, not reaching the scene of 
battle until the fighting had ceased on the sixth. 
The absence of this veteran division was keenly 
felt. During all the morning hours the Federal 
line was being steadily driven from one position 
to another. The Confederates paid a fearful 
price for their advance, but nothing could stay 
their impetuous charges. At one o’clock Buell 
reached the landing on a steamer ahead of his 
troops, and had a brief meeting with Grant. Both 
generals must have been impressed with the ex- 
treme gravity of the situation. On the plateau 
near the river, men mounted and on foot, wagons 
and their teams and excited drivers were hope- 
lessly mixed up with batteries of artillery and 
army stores. At the foot of the bluff thousands 
of panic-stricken stragglers had taken refuge. 
Buell cursed and berated them for cowards and 
even threatened them with the cannon of the gun- 
boats, but “most of them would have been shot 
where they lay, without resistance, before they 
would have taken muskets and marched to the 
front to protect themselves.” Many of them 
perished in frantic efforts to get over the river, 
and not a few were seen sitting astride of logs 
and desperately trying to paddle their way across 


SHILOH 89 


to the eastern shore. But the bulk of the army 
was fighting grimly and desperately, and Grant 
himself had no thought of anything but fight- 
ing it out. Buell thus describes him at the 
time of their meeting on the steamboat: “In all 
his career he has, I venture to say, never appeared 
to better advantage. There was the frank, brave 
soldier, rather subdued, realizing the critical situa-., 
tion in which causes of some sort had placed him, 
but ready without affectation or bravado, to do 
anything that duty required of him.” 

The one rock which broke the victorious on- 
rush of the Confederates was the body of troops 
under Prentiss and W. H. L. Wallace. They 
were posted on high ground on what was after- 
wards known as the “Hornet’s Nest.” A dense 
thicket screened the men of Wallace and Prentiss; 
in front of them was a sunken road, washed by 
the recent rains, and beyond that again an open 
field over which the Confederates had to charge. 
The stubborn defense of Wallace and Prentiss 
from ten a. m. until five-thirty p. m. probably 
saved the day for the Union army, for it pre- 
vented the Confederates from turning the left 
flank at the Landing. It was in front of the 
Hornet’s Nest that Johnston was killed while 
leading a charge, about two-thirty o’clock. Dur- 
ing a lull in the fighting before the ridge, Brecken- 
ridge rode up to Johnston and said to him, not 
observing Governor Harris of Tennessee: ‘“Gen- 
eral, I have a Tennessee regiment that won't 
fight.” Governor Harris answered, “General 
Breckenridge, show me that regiment!” After a 
vain attempt to get the men to charge, Harris 
and Breckenridge returned to Johnston and he 
himself determined to lead them. Sitting his 
thoroughbred mare, “Fire-eater,”’ and gesticulat- 
ing with a little tin cup which he held in his 


90 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


hand, Johnston rode down the lines saying, “Men! 
we must use the bayonet. I will lead you!” Then, 
with a mighty shout the line moved forward and 
the ridge was carried. Johnston’s horse was 
wounded in four places, but he himself was un- 
hurt. But a number of the retreating Federals 
turned and fired a last volley. One of these 
minie-balls tore the popliteal artery of Johnston’s 
left leg, although the wound was not discovered 
until he fell, faint from loss of blood. 

Governor Harris and one of his aides led his 
horse back under cover of the hill and, lifting 
him from it, gently laid him on the grass. When 
his brother-in-law, Preston, asked him if he knew 
him, he smiled faintly but spoke no word. Ina 
few moments his precious lifeblood had ebbed 
away, and the Confederacy’s great leader was 
dead—dead in the moment of apparent victory. 
In the words of President Davis, ‘““The fortunes 
of a country hung by a single thread of the life 
that was yielded on the field of Shiloh.” 

Beauregard now assumed the command of the 
army and the attack was everywhere pushed for- 
ward. For three more hours the Confederates 
hammered away at the Hornet’s Nest, until at 
five-thirty o’clock Wallace was mortally wounded 
and Prentiss with 2,000 men surrendered. But 
just about that same time the steamboats were 
bringing over the river the advance guard of 
Buell’s army. The left wing of the Union army 
formed for its last stand not far from the land- 
ing. The artillery was posted so as to sweep a 
ravine partly filled with backwater, and the two 
gunboats, Lexington and Tyler, anchored off the 
mouth of the ravine, in Dill’s Creek, and com- 
menced to throw their shells into the Confeder- 
ates. At that moment Beauregard gave the order 
to cease firing. He reports that darkness was 


SHILOH 91 


coming on and that the Confederate regiments 
were in confusion. That Grant would have been 
swept into the river if the attack had been pressed 
is by no means certain. Nothing but the attack 
itself could have settled that much disputed point. 
Considering the desperate fighting of the greater 
part of the Union army, the strong position held 
by their lines above Dill’s Creek, and the fresh 
regiments of Buell, then disembarking, it is ex- 
ceedingly doubtful whether the Confederate at- 
tack would have proved successful, although no 
less capable a man than Bragg cried out when 
he received the order to fall back, “My God, my 
God, it is too late!” Grant declares that the 
arrival of the division of Lew Wallace and the 
Army of the Ohio had no effect on the day’s grim 
and bloody work. “Thus night came, Wallace 
came, and the advance of Nelson’s division came, 
but none—unless night—in time to be of ma- 
terial service to the gallant men who saved Shiloh 
on that first day against heavy odds.” 

In the darkness the Confederates drew back 
about a mile to the lines occupied in the morning 
by the Union troops and slept in their tents. The 
two gunboats fired shells every fifteen minutes 
in the direction of the Confederate lines all 
through the night, and the rain fell in torrents. 
Grant, sore and bruised with the fall of the Friday 
preceding, and worn with the anxiety of the battle, 
lay down under an oak in a vain effort to find 
sleep. The rain drove him into a log house where 
the wounded were being brought, but their 
wounds and cries were less endurable than 
the storm outside, and he went back to his 
bivouac under the tree. Lew Wallace, resting at 
his headquarters on the right, heard through the 
noise of the falling rain and the bursting of the 
gunboat shells, the voice of a wounded man cry- 


We HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


ing piteously and constantly, all through the 
night, from the place where he lay between the 
lines, “Help! Help!” He was one of many thou- 
sands, and until day there was none to help. 
Among those thousands who cried for help, and 
with none to save, was the heroic commander of 
the second division, W. H. L. Wallace. While at 
the head of his men he had been severely 
wounded, and in the confusion incident to the 
withdrawal and surrender of his troops was left 
for dead on the field. On Monday, when the 
Union troops recovered that part of the field, 
Wallace was found still alive. Mrs. Wallace had 
come up on one of the gunboats and she tenderly 
nursed him at Savannah, where he died on the 
tenth. 

At five in the morning the reinforced Federal 
army commenced the attack, and the weary and 
disappointed Confederates were sullenly and 
slowly driven back over the ground which they 
had won the day before at such a fearful cost. 
But the odds were too heavy, and Beauregard 
wisely and skilfully withdrew to Corinth. Grant 
ought to have destroyed him, but the pursuit was 
not pressed. The truth was that he was glad to 
emerge from the difficulty as well as he did. The 
army too must have been appalled at the slaugh- 
ter. Until then there had been no great loss 
of life. But now, on that Monday evening, almost 
twenty thousand men lay dead and wounded in 
the tangled woods of the field. Many of the 
wounded would have perished in the forest fires 
had it not been for the merciful rain which came 
down upon both armies and showed pity to the 
just and unjust. The Confederate wounded suf- 
fered the most, for they were heaped like sacks 
of grain into the wagons, groaning, cursing, pray- 
ing, while the mules, urged on by the frightened 


SHILOH 93 


drivers, plunged belly-deep in the mud, the water 
often coming up into the beds of the wagons. 
“The scene on the field,’ says Sherman, “would 
have cured anybody of war.” 

On the side of the Confederates there fought a 
young lad of sixteen, aiterwards known to the 
world as Henry M. Stanley. As a mere child he 
had been taken to Aspah Workhouse, and after 
a pathetic boyhood of neglect and abuse, was 
working as a butcher’s boy in Liverpool, when he 
was trapped into signing as a cabin-boy on a 
sailing vessel bound for New Orleans. At New 
Orleans, with his clothes and Bible, he fled the 
ship. On the streets of the city he found em- 
ployment with a kind, Christian gentleman who 
baptized him with his own hand and gave him 
his own name, Henry M. Stanley. After the 
death of his benefactor he was cast once more 
upon the world. When the war broke out he 
was clerking in a Hebrew store in the mud flats 
of Arkansas. The lads of the town were enlisting 
in the army, but it never occurred to him to do 
likewise, till one morning a package filled with 
articles of female attire was found in his room. 
He took the hint and forthwith enlisted in the 
Dixie Grays. Then followed the first enthusiasm 
of war, the prayers of the clergy, the orations of 
politicians, the tears and kisses and flowers of the 
women; then the fading of the new uniforms and 
the fading of the moral and spiritual, all the 
“Shalt nots” changed into “Thou shalt,” the lapse 
from prayer and innocence, the rise of the beast 
in man, the lust for battle, and finally the baptism 
of fire at Shiloh. In his autobiography he gives 
us his impression of that bloody field: “It was 
the first Field of Glory I had seen in my May 
of life, and the first time that Glory sickened me 
with its repulsive aspects and made me suspect 


94 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


that it was all a glittering lie. My thoughts re- 
verted to the time when these festering bodies 
were idolized objects of their mother’s passionate 
love, their fathers standing by, half-fearing to 
touch the fragile little things, and the wings of 
civil law outspread to protect parents and chil- 
dren in their family loves, their coming and going 
followed with pride and praise, and the blessing 
of the Almighty overshadowing all. Then, as 
they were nearing manhood, through some 
strange warp of society, men in authority sum- 
moned them from school and shop, from field 
and farm, to meet in the woods on a -Sunday 
morning for mutual butchery, with the deadliest 
instruments ever invented. Civil Law, Religion, 
Morality, complaisantly standing aside, while 
ninety thousand young men, who had _ been 
preached and moralized to for years, were. let 
loose to engage in the carnival of slaughter.” . , -, 

Until the battle of Shiloh, it was still thought . 
in the North that the war would be brief-and 
that a single great battle would end it. The 
carnage of Shiloh dispelled that illusion and told 
the aroused and awakened nation that it must 
drink a deep and bitter cup. It had to be the 
complete conquest of the South. 

Out on the field where the Army of the Ohio 
fought on the second day there now stands a 
splendid monument to the soldiers of Illinois. On 
one side a bronze relief shows the men fighting 
among the trees. Now the feathered folk of the 
forest have built their nests in the bronze 
branches of the trees and the peace of God broods 
over the field. Peace, Shiloh, has come. But it 
did not come without pain and anguish, for 
“without shedding of blood there is no remission 
of sin’—sins of men, or sins of nations. 


VIII 
STONE RIVER 
KENTUCKY SAVED 


The Stone River, flowing peacefully away past 
limestone hills and through rich meadows, where 
cattle rest beneath the flowering locusts and 
gracious elms, has little about it today which 
suggests one of the bloodiest struggles of the 
wat. 

The Confederate army, beaten at Shiloh, might 
have been pursued and destroyed at once, but it 
Was permitted to escape, and, early in August, 
reinforced and reorganized and now under the 
command of General Braxton Bragg, marched 
north into Kentucky. General Don Carlos Buell 
with his Army of the Ohio, after an exciting race, 
reached Louisville ahead of Bragg, and in the 
severe battle of Perryville crippled Bragg so 
badly that he was compelled to give up his in- 
vasion and withdraw to Tennessee, where he 
established his headquarters near Murfreesboro. 
The campaign of Buell was a disappointment to 
the Government and he was replaced by General 
William S. Rosecrans, on the twenty-sixth of 
October. General Rosecrans was one of that dis- 
tinguished list of Ohio-born soldiers who ren- 
dered such great service to the Union cause. At 
the outbreak of the war, like nearly every other 
general who rose to distinction, he was retired 
from the army and was conducting a business at 
Cincinnati. Rosecrans now occupied Nashville, 


95 


96 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 
while Bragg took up a position near Murfrees- 
boro. Towards the last of December Rosecrans 
advanced to attack him, and thus on December 
31, 1862, and January 2, 1863, was fought the 
sanguinary battle of Stone River, or Murfrees- 
boro. 

The campaign which culminated in Perryville 
and Stone River recalls one of the most tragic 
episodes of the Civil War, the killing of Major- 
General William Nelson by General Jefferson C. 
Davis, in the Galt House, at Louisville, Kentucky, 
September 29, 1862. Until the arrival of Buell, 
Nelson was in command of the troops at Louis- 
ville. For a neglect of duty Nelson had repri- 
manded one of his subordinates, General Davis, 
and ordered him to report to General Wright at 
Cincinnati. Davis questioned the authority of 
Nelson to order him, whereupon Nelson ordered 
his adjutant-general to see that Davis was put 
across the river. When Buell reached Louisville, 
General Wright ordered Davis to report again 
to Nelson. He arrived at the Galt House on the 
morning of the twenty-ninth of September, ac- 
companied by Governor Oliver P. Morton, of 
Indiana. General Buell in his account of the 
tragedy severely denounces Governor Morton 
for trying to exercise a quasi-control over In- 
diana troops in the army under Buell and en- 
couraging a spirit of insubordination. Davis ac- 
costed Nelson in the vestibule of the Galt House 
and in an insulting manner demanded satisfaction 
for what he termed the injury done him by 
Nelson. As he spoke, Davis threw a wad of 
paper into Nelson’s face, and Nelson responded 
by slapping Davis in the face, and said to Gov- 
ernor Morton, “Did you come here, sir, to see 
me insulted?” Davis then procured a pistol and, 
meeting Nelson near the foot of the stairway, 


STONE RIVER 97 


fired at him, inflicting a mortal wound. Nelson 
made his way upstairs and fell near the door of 
General Buell’s room, requesting that a clergyman 
be sent for to baptize him. 

Davis was immediately put under arrest by 
Buell, but as the army was about to engage in 
battle, Buell could not spare officers for the trial 
and requested General Halleck to order a court 
from Washington for the trial of the case. Ina 
few days Davis was released by order of General 
Wright, ostensibly on the ground that the case 
might be turned over to the civil authorities. 
Davis was indicted by a grand jury, but the case 
was never brought to trial and he served with 
distinction to the end of the war. Thus, a re- 
volting crime on the part of a high officer was 
never punished. Buell dismisses the sad story 
with these words: “And thus the military author- 
ity of the Government was abased over the grave 
of a high officer, whose military slaughter by 
another officer under such circumstances, and a 
purely military offense, it had not the character 
to bring to trial.” 

We reached Murfreesboro by rail from Chat- 
tanooga, about two o'clock on a spring morning. 
We had telegraphed to the proprietor of a hotel 
to meet us at the station, and when we alighted 
from the train we found a two-seated carriage 
awaiting us. The driver told us that his hotel 
was filled up, but that we could secure accom- 
modations at the Jordan House. At the door of 
the Jordan House, therefore, we were unloaded 
in the early morning hours. Vigorous and long- 
continued knocking finally brought to the door 
the night clerk, clad only in a shirt and blanket. 
He seemed indignant that the other hotel had 
dumped us on his hands, and it was only because 
of our importunity that he finally took a candle 


98 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


and lighted our way up the broad staircase to a 
small room on the attic floor. The hotel had an 
air of vanished greatness. In the morning we 
learned that at the time of the Civil War it had 
been the home of a well-known citizen, and that 
in the very parlor, off the dining-room, where we 
were eating our breakfast, John Morgan, the 
daring raider and cavalry leader, was married to 
the daughter of the owner of the house by Lieu- 
tenant-General Bishop Polk, and in the presence of a 
number of prominent Confederate’ generals, 
among them Bragg, Hardee, Breckenridge and 
Cheatham. This was a few days before the 
battle of Stone River, and the same evening Mor- 
gan left his bride and went on a raid towards 
Kentucky. Men still loved; and war, though it 
kindled hate, could not stifle love. But it left 
little time for honeymoons. 

We had for our guide to the battlefield a 
wizened little man who had been a youth in the 
neighborhood during the war. He told us how, 
when Forrest took the town in the fall of ’sixty- 
two, he was possessed with the idea of becoming 
a soldier, although then not more than fifteen. He 
went out to the headquarters of the army and 
found Forrest sitting on a log, whittling a stick. 
The famous raider seemed amazed at the request 
of the lad to be enrolled as a soldier, but asked 
him if he could ride. Being answered in the af- 
firmative, he told the boy to get on a horse which 
was standing close by, and ride up and down the 
road before him. When he came back and dis- 
mounted, Forrest said to him, “My boy, you’re 
a good rider, but you’re too damn small to be a 
soldier.” 

After we had crossed the Stone River, which 
gave its name to the battle, we reached the ex- 
treme right of the Union position which had been 


STONE RIVER 99 


held by McCook’s corps. Thomas commanded 
the center and Crittenden the left. Opposed to 
McCook was Hardee, on the Confederate left, 
Polk in the center, and Breckenridge on the left. 
Both Bragg and Rosecrans had planned to at- 
tack on the thirty-first, and at the same place, the 
enemy’s right. But Hardee, on the Confederate 
left, was the first to move, and with a vigorous 
attack drove the right wing of the Union army 
under McCook back to the Nashville pike, clear 
into the rear of the Federal left. At the same 
time, Crittenden had crossed the river on the 
Union left, to advance against the Confederate 
right. He was hastily recalled when Hardee made 
his attack. 

The day was saved for the Union army by 
the splendid resistance of the center corps under 
Thomas. Thomas was the “Rock of Stone River” 
no less than the “Rock of Chickamauga.” The 
winter night came on with the advantage on the 
side of the Confederate army, and Bragg tele- 
graphed to his Government, “God has granted 
us a Happy New Year.” There was no fighting 
on the first of January, but on the following day, 
at four o’clock in the afternoon, Breckenridge’s 
division made a furious attack on the Union right, 
only to be driven back with great loss. On the 
night of the third, Bragg evacuated Murfreesboro 
and retreated towards the southwest. So far as 
actual fighting was concerned, it was a drawn 
battle; but it was in reality a Union victory, for 
it necessitated the retreat of Bragg’s army and 
the abandonment of the invasion of Kentucky and 
central Tennessee. Both in results and desperate 
fighting it may well be compared with Antietam. 
In concluding his official report of the battle of 
Stone River, the devout Rosecrans made appro- 
priate use of the beautiful words of the One Hun- 


100 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


dred and Fifteenth Psalm, “Not unto us, O Lord, 
not unto us, but unto Thy Name give glory.” 

Near the Franklin Pike we saw nailed to a tree 
a board sign which said that at that place Colonel 
Garesche, Rosecrans’ Chief-of-Staff, was instantly 
killed. Rosecrans, with a few of his staff, and 
General Sheridan, was riding along the front of 
Sheridan’s column, when the Confederates opened 
on them with their guns. One of these solid shells 
carried away the head of Garesche. Both Rose- 
crans and Garesche were Roman Catholics and 
only a few minutes before had partaken of the 
Sacrament. Sheridan says, “Garesche’s appalling 
death stunned us all, and a momentary expression 
of horror spread over Rosecrans’ face; but at 
such a time the importance of self-control was 
vital, and he pursued his course with a spirit of 
indifference; which those about him saw was 
assumed, for undoubtedly he felt most deeply the 
death of his friend and trusted staff officer.” 

More than twenty thousand were killed and 
wounded during the three days’ fighting at Stone 
River, and many of these Union dead now sleep 
in the National Cemetery. There, as in every 
other National Cemetery, from Maine to the 
Philippines, Union dead are commemorated by 
steel tablets, on which are graven the lines from 
The Bivouac of the Dead, a poem written by a 
Confederate soldier, Theodore O’Hara, in memory 
of Kentuckians who fell at Beuna Vista: 


The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat 
The soldiers’ last tattoo. 

No more on life’s parade shall meet, 
That brave and fallen few. 

On fame’s eternal camping ground, 
Their silent tents are spread 

And glory guards with solemn round 
The Bivouac of the Dead. 


STONE RIVER 101 


Among so many brave, as in every army, there had 
been some who shirked their duty, and an example 
was necessary. Of this number were four officers 
in Sheridan’s division who had abandoned their 
colors. After their guilt had been established, 
Sheridan caused his whole division to be formed 
in a hollow square, and had the four officers 
marched to the center. There he told them he 
would not humiliate any officer or soldier by re- 
quiring them to touch their disgraced swords and 
compelled them to deliver them up to his colored 
servant, who cut from their coats every insignia 
of rank. Then an order was read, dismissing 
them from the service, and the four cowards were 
drummed out of camp. It is an incident char- 
acteristic of the fiery Sheridan, but it had its 
desired effect, for he says that from that day no 
officer in that division ever abandoned his colors. 

Sheridan distinguished himself in this battle 
and was from then on regarded as one of the 
most promising of the division commanders. Al- 
though born in New York he may justly be 
claimed by Ohio and his name added to that re- 
markable list of Ohio men who served the Union 
with such distinction, for he was brought up in 
that state and appointed to West Point from 
Ohio. Perhaps of all the Union officers who rose 
to high rank, Sheridan inherited the least in 
respect to home training and education. His 
parents were Irish immigrants. His father had 
secured some employment on the Cumberland 
Road, then being built west of the Ohio. This 
led him to settle in Somerset, Perry County. 
There Sheridan had a little schooling in the vil- 
lage school and soon graduated into the position 
of clerk in a local store. He did some reading 
and was able to inform his customers about the 
events of the Mexican War then being fought, 


102 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


and in which most of his future associates were 
receiving their baptism of fire. Unlike Grant, 
who did not want to go to West Point or be a 
soldier, Sheridan was possessed with an ambition 
to go to the Academy and become an officer. He 
entered with the Class of 1848. Among his 
classmates, and for a time his roommate, was 
Henry W. Slocum, afterwards the able com- 
mander of the 12th Corps in the Army of the Po- 
tomac and the left wing of Sherman’s Army. 
Slocum gave Sheridan great assistance by help- 
ing him with the difficult mathematical problems 
for which he had not been properly prepared. 
He graduated with the Class of 1853, being num- 
ber thirty-four in a membership of fifty-two. At 
the head of this class was the brilliant McPherson, 
another son of Ohio, whose career was cut short 
at Peach Tree Creek in the Atlanta campaign. 
Schofield and Hood were also members of this 
class. Sheridan was one of the youngest generals 
in the Union Army, being just thirty years of 
age at the time Stone River was fought, and 
weighing one hundred and fifteen pounds. 

Grant had the highest opinion of Sheridan as a 
commander and, in conversation with John Rus- 
sell Young, said of him: ‘He belongs to the 
very first rank of soldiers, not only of our country 
but of the world. I rank Sheridan with Napoleon 
and Frederick and the great commanders in his- 
tory. No man ever had such a faculty of finding 
out things as Sheridan, of knowing all about the 
enemy. He was always the best informed man 
in his command as to the enemy. Then he had 
that magnetic quality of swaying men, which I 
wish I had—a rare quality in a general.” 

In the battle of Stone River Sheridan rode his 
famous charger, Rienzi. The animal had been 
presented to Sheridan by Captain A. P. Campbell, 


STONE RIVER 103 


of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry, when the army was 
encamped near Rienzi, Mississippi. The horse 
was then three years old, sixteen hands high and 
strongly built, and, save for three white feet, 
was jet black. His owner was afraid to mount 
him and was glad to present him to Sheridan. 
It was on this animal that he made his famous 
ride from Winchester to Cedar Creek, in 1864. 
Rienzi carried Sheridan through all his stirring 
campaigns, and, although wounded several times 
in battle, survived the war and lived to a good 
old age, dying in 1878. 

In the Presidential campaign of 1864, a number 
of Republican leaders, meeting one night at the 
old Continental Hotel, on Chestnut Street, Phila- 
delphia, asked Thomas Buchanan Reed to write 
something which could be used in the campaign. 
The news had just come in of Sheridan’s victory 
at Cedar Creek, and taking that for his cue, 
Reed immediately composed his stirring poem, 
“Sheridan’s Ride,” reciting the several stanzas 
as he reached the different landings on the grand 
stairway of the hotel, on his way to his room. 
This poem made Rienzi the most famous war 
horse of American history: 


And there, through the flush of the morning light 
A steed as black as the steeds of night, 

Was seen to pass as with eagle flight ; 

As if he knew the terrible need 

He stretched away with his utmost speed. 

Hill rose and fell; but his heart was gay, 

With Sheridan fifteen miles away. 


Interesting light is thrown on the character of 
Sheridan, destined to become one of the great 
personalities of the war, by the story of his fight 
at West Point with a fellow-cadet, William R. 
Terrill, of Virginia. In September, 1851, Sheri- 


104 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


dan’s company at West Point was forming for 
parade, when Cadet Sergeant Terrill gave 
Sheridan an order to “dress” in a certain direc- 
tion. Sheridan thought he was accurately dressed 
and that the order had been given in an improper 
tone, and in his furious anger made at Terrill 
with lowered bayonet, but got control of himself 
before an actual contact could take place. Ter- 
rill, of course, reported him for this gross in- 
subordination and when they next met Sheridan 
at once attacked him with his fists. The result 
was that Sheridan was suspended from the 
Academy for a year; not graduating until 1853. 
In 1862 both Sheridan and Terrill were with 
Buell’s army, then assembling at Louisville, and 
Sheridan took steps towards a reconciliation. The 
reconciliation, however, was not destined to last 
as long as the estrangement, for Terrill was killed 
a few days later in the battle of Perryville. Ter- 
rill was from Virginia, and had a brother, James 
B. Terrill, who became a general in the Confed- 
erate Army and was killed leading his brigade at 
Bethesda Church, Virginia. When the war was 
over, the father brought the body of William all 
the way from Kentucky, and that of James from 
the field of Bethesda and buried them at the Vir- 
ginia home in the same grave. On the stone over 
their grave he had placed the inscription: 


This monument erected by their father. 
God alone knows which was right. 


IX 


FREDERICKSBURG AND 
CHANCELLORSVILLE 


DISASTER AND DISAPPOINTMENT 


A fine old white-pillared Virginia mansion among 
the trees at the top of a green hill, at the bottom of 
which runs a low stone wall—this is the scene of the 
saddest tragedy of the Civil War. 

In the Philipps house across the heights from Fred- 
ericksburg, on the evening of December 9, 1862, Burn- 
side had just finished explaining to his general officers 
the plan of attack against the Confederate Army. 
General French declared that the battle would be won 
in forty-eight hours, and called for three cheers for 
the commanding general, which were given with a 
will. But as Burnside passed along the hall from the 
council chamber he met Brigader-General R. C. Haw- 
kins and said to him, “What do you think of it?” 
Hawkins answered, “If you make the attack as con- 
templated, it will be the greatest slaughter of the war; 
and there isn’t infantry enough in our whole army to 
carry these heights if they are well defended.” Haw- 
kins was right and the cheers were wrong. In a little 
while those same officers who cheered the plans of their 
general groaned aloud over the senseless slaughter of 
their men. 

On the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, 
Major W. R. Mason, C. S. A., was sent across the 
river under a flag of truce to meet with Union officers 
and make arrangements for the burial of the dead. 
He was an old friend of Burnside, and he said to the 

105 


106 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


officer to whom he handed his dispatch, ‘Give my re- 
gards to General Burnside and say to him that I 
thought he was too familiar with the surroundings of 
Fredericksburg to butt his brains out deliberately 
against our stone walls.” When all has been said and 
written, that is about the best and shortest history of 
the battle of Fredericksburg—a deliberate butting out 
of brains against a remorseless stone wall. 

Burnside was one of those men who have greatness 
thrust upon them. The battle in which he commanded 
is the least glorious of the battles of the Civil War. 
Not that there was no display of valor and heroism, 
for of that there was no lack, but because of the blind 
alleys into which that valor was asked to go. Even 
heroism is commonplace unless it be expressed in an 
intelligent effort. There seems to have been no such 
effort at Fredericksburg. The lack of an intelligent 
plan and method at the battle on the part of the Union 
Army is strikingly set forth in the report of Hooker, 
who commanded one of the grand divisions. He 
writes that after losing all the men which his orders 
required him to lose, he withdrew. That one of the 
commanders should have thrown in his men with no 
hope and no expectation of doing anything except de- 
plete his ranks is evidence enough of the lack of plan 
on the part of Burnside. It was madness with no 
ameliorating method in it. “Oh! great God!” groaned 
Couch to Howard, as they stood in the steeple of the 
courthouse and watched the blue lines wasting away 
on the plain in front of the stone wall. “See how our 
men, our poor fellows, are falling!’ While his men 
were being cut down in the hopeless assault, the gray- 
bearded Sumner, restrained by General Burnside from 
crossing the river to take the place at the head of his 
lines, shed tears at the awful spectacle. And the 
nation groaned too, when it heard of the slaughter. 

After “Jeb” Stuart’s wild ride around the entire 
Union Army in the middle of October, McClellan 





FREDERICKSBURG 107 


had little standing at Washington. He was relieved 
by Burnside on the fifteenth of November. Public 
opinion demanded an engagement with the Confeder- 
ate Army, and Burnside proceeded to engage the en- 
emy without particular regard as to time or place. The 
failure of the War Department to have pontoons ready 
for Burnside when he reached the Rappahannock on 
November 17th gave Lee time to concentrate his army. 
The position taken by the Confederates at Fred- 
ericksburg was one of unusual strength. Back of the 
sleepy old town, filled with memories of Washington 
and guarding the tomb of Mary, the mother of Wash- 
ington, is a steep hill. The hill is crowned by a fine, old 
southern mansion and takes its name, Marye’s Heights, 
from the once owners of the house. At the bottom of 
the hill, on the Fredericksburg side, there is a sunken 
road flanked by a stone wall. On the hill above, just 
in front of the Marye house, Lee had his artillery 
situated. Alexander, Longstreet’s chief of artillery, 
had declared that his guns so swept the plain below 
that not a chicken could live on it. Behind the stone 
wall at the base of the hill, protected both by the wall 
and the depression of the road, a sort of sunken road 
of Ohain, lay the infantry in three lines, one loading, 
the next passing the guns, the next firing. Against 
such a position Burnside marched his men on the fatal 
thirteenth of December, 1862. Their first obstacle 
was a canal, the bridges of which had been destroyed. 
Those who got over this and escaped the fire of the 
artillery on the heights above, rushed forward to cer- 
tain death in front of the stone wall. More than 
twelve thousand men, dead and wounded, were sacri- 
ficed in a blind effort to take the Heights. The most 
honorable mention of that dark day belongs to the 
Irish brigade. Twelve hundred strong, with sprigs of 
green in their caps, the Irishmen marched in the light 
of the sinking sun against the terrible stone wall. 
When they came back, they mustered just two hundred 


108 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


and eighty. When the firing had ceased, a lady ven- 
tured to look out of her door upon the field where the 
Federal dead lay. Then the field was blue—blue with 
the uniforms of the dead. A few hours afterward 
she looked again, and the field was white—the ghastly 
white of human bodies stripped of their clothing. The 
Irish brigade was commanded by the Irish orator 
Thomas Francis Meagher. In 1848 he was sentenced 
to death for sedition in Ireland, but the sentence was 
commuted to life imprisonment in Van Diemen’s 
Land. Thence, in 1849, he escaped to the United 
States. He survived the perils of the Civil War, only 
to end an adventurous and romantic career by drown- 
ing in the Missouri River near Fort Benton, Montana, 
when governor of that territory. On the Confederate 
side, the most conspicuous officer of Irish birth was 
Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, killed when storming the 
Union lines at Franklin, Tennessee. 

Fredericksburg is not without its heroine. She was 
the mistress of a cottage along the road where the Con- 
federates lay. In the midst of the battle a ball passed 
clear through the house and mortally wounded the 
Confederate General, T. R. Cobb. No bandages were 
at hand, but the brave woman slipped off her skirt, 
tore it into strips and bound up the leg of the dying 
officer. Battles are strange things. When the can- 
nonading was making the hills shake and men were 
falling by the thousands, General Lee’s thoughts, so he 
confessed in a letter, were wandering far from the 
scene of carnage. He was thinking of the summer day 
he told his love to Mary Parke Custis as they stood 
together beneath a tree. 

In his general orders telling of the battle of Fred- 
ericksburg, the only officer below a major-general 
mentioned by Lee was John Pelham, of Alabama, 
known afterwards as “the gallant Pelham.”’ Pelham 
was killed at Kelly’s Ford. His body was carried 
back to the plantation home in Alabama, and as they 


FREDERICKSBURG 109 


bore him up to the house in the evening, as the moon- 
light lay white on the cotton fields and on the vines at 
the doorway, his mother stood waiting to greet him. 
As they carried the body in, she said through falling 
tears, ‘“Washed in the blood of the Lamb that was 
slain.” He was only twenty-five years old, but his 
name stands out as a synonym for chivalry and gal- 
lantry beyond that of almost any officer in the South- 
ern Army. 

January 26, 1863, saw the Army of the Potomac 
with a new commander, “Fighting Joe’ Hooker. 
After months of drilling and organizing he had re- 
stored the morale and discipline of the army and was 
ready for aggressive movements. At that very time, 
Lee and Jackson were contemplating an invasion of 
Pennsylvania; but Hooker moved first. Along with 
his commission as commander, Lincoln had _ sent 
Hooker a fatherly and characteristic letter. He ended 
the letter by saying, “I have heard, in such a way as 
to believe it, of your recently saying that both the 
army and the government needed a dictator. Of 
course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have 
given you the command. Only those generals who gain 
successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of 
you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. 
And now beware of rashness, beware of rashness, but 
with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and 
give us victories.” As events turned out, Hooker 
failed at Chancellorsville because of too great fear of 
rashness. His sobriquet, “Fighting Joe,’ was not won 
in that campaign. 

The spirit of confidence was abroad in the army, for 
their old huts across from Fredericksburg were de- 
stroyed by the soldiers when they took up the march. 
Lee was lying in his old position on the heights back of 
Fredericksburg when he learned that Hooker with a 
great army was well in his rear, in the vicinity of the 
Chancellor House. This house, a substantial brick 


110 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


building, stands in the midst of a clearing in the dense 
forest, not inappropriately named the Wilderness. 
Sedgwick had been left with a strong corps at Fred- 
ericksburg and Lee was between two fires. Lee left 
Jubal Early in the lines at Marye’s Heights and turned 
back along the plank road in the direction of Hooker’s 
army. Everything had so far turned out well for 
Hooker, and the bombastic manifesto issued to his 
troops, in which he said the “enemy must come out of 
his intrenchments or else ingloriously fly,’ was not al- 
together out of keeping with the situation. But on 
that Friday, May Ist, everything began to go wrong. 
Instead of fighting where he had planned to make 
battle, on high clear ground well on towards Freder- 
icksburg, Hooker ordered his line to fall back towards 
the Chancellor House. ‘This retrograde movement 
angered his corps commanders, discouraged the men 
in the ranks, and gave Lee the opportunity to send 
Jackson on his famous flanking expedition. When 
the order to withdraw reached him, Meade exclaimed, 
“My God! If we can’t hold the top of the hill, we 
surely can’t hold the bottom!” 

The keeper of the inn at Fredericksburg was a 
veteran of Lee’s army and had charged with the men 
of Pickett’s division on the third day at Gettysburg. 
After his term of enlistment expired he was employed 
with a comrade in burying Union dead who fell in the 
battle of Fredericksburg. As they were shoveling the 
earth down upon a Union corpse the one said to his 
companion, “Tom, don’t this beat the devil! Jeff 
Davis gave us thirteen dollars a month for shooting 
these fellows, and now Uncle Sam pays us a dollar a 
day for burying them!” For a guide this veteran 
sécured me a wiry little man who had lived as a boy 
in Fredericksburg at the time of the battle. A's be- 
fitted his profession, he was well versed in lore of other 
battles, particularly the battle of Waterloo, and as we 


FREDERICKSBURG 111 


jolted over the terrible corduroy roads he recited the 
lines of Byron, commencing, 


There was the sound of revelry by night. . . 


In the midst of the wilderness we came to a road 
leading off to the left. Beneath the trees where the 
roads join, our guide pointed out a small granite stone. 
It marks the bivouac of Lee and Jackson on Friday 
night, May lst. It was there they planned the great 
stroke, and along that road that “Stonewall” Jackson 
passed with his thirty thousand men in the gray mists 
of the next morning. That movement and the subse- 
quent turning of the right flank of the Union Army has 
been the subject of more debate and discussion than 
any other action of the war. It has generally been con- 
sidered a brilliant climax to the brilliant military career 
of the man who led the flanking column. If the move- 
ment had failed, and there was every reason why it 
should have failed, Lee would have been greatly 
blamed for dividing his army and leaving himself with 
an inferior force between Sedgwick and Hooker. With 
all due regard for the dash and daring of Jackson and 
his men, the success of the movement must ever re- 
main one of the mysteries of the war. It was a march 
in broad daylight with a column of almost thirty thou- 
sand men, along the lines of a great army. A body 
of cavalry doing its proper work would have un- 
covered this move, but Hooker had sent Stoneman on 
an abortive raid towards Richmond. At one place, 
Lewis Creek, Jackson had to pass over high ground 
in full view of the Union Army, and hundreds of 
glasses were leveled on his men by Federal officers. 
But the rumor which spread through the Union Army 
was that Lee was retreating. All through that long 
hot Saturday the Union outposts were being constantly 
driven in, and reported the passage of a large body 
of troops. The 11th Corps was under Howard and 


112 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


formed the Union right. It was a new corps in the 
army and had been dubbed the foreign contingent, 
because of the large number of Germans in the corps. 
Von Gilsa, Schurz, Schimmelpfeinig, Krygyaweuski, 
and Steinwehr were the names of some of the officers 
and it is little wonder that the corps was so named. 
But that day they were the victims of stupidity and 
inaction at headquarters. . 

At six o’clock the whole corps was facing south and 
east, and the men were getting their suppers, sleeping, 
or playing cards. The first intimation they had of the 
presence of Jackson’s men was when the startled deer 
and rabbits ran through their camps. This was fol- 
lowed by the rebel yell, and in a moment the Confed- 
erates, lean, shoeless, ragged, but great fighters and 
marchers, were upon them. Regiment after regiment 
was telescoped and men, mules and guns were hope- 
lessly entangled. As an instance of the confusion it 
is related how the 119th New York Regiment was 
formed in battle line only to find that their backs were 
to the foe. In the midst of the riot and panic Dilger 
saved the honor of his corps by fighting his guns to the 
last man. Our guide took us through the forest and 
under the barb-wire fence to show us where Dilger 
had turned his guns from south to west and stayed for 
a moment the onrush of the Confederates. 

A mile or two down the road Hooker was sitting on 
the veranda of the Chancellor House, enjoying the 
quiet spring evening and chatting with his officers. 
The woods of the wilderness were so dense that the 
sound of the firing did not carry for any distance. 
The first intimation he had of the disaster was when 
he saw men, mules, oxen, horses and soldiers pouring 
down the road. He and Howard did what they could 
to stem the rout, but the Confederates were not to be 
denied. 

In the darkness the victorious Confederates had be- 
come disorganized themselves, and with a view to re- 


FREDERICKSBURG 113 


forming the lines, Jackson had ridden out along the 
plank road on a reconnoissance. The advance lines 
of the Confederates had orders not to fire on infantry 
because of the darkness and the confusion, but to fire 
on any mounted troops which might appear. As 
Jackson and his staff were trying to get into the lines, 
they were fired upon by the 18th North Carolina Regi- 
ment. Just what happened no one will ever know. 
A Massachusetts regiment has claimed the sad dis- 
tinction of killing Jackson. But whether by his own 
men, or by the hand of the enemy, Jackson fell mor- 
tally wounded. 

At the time of his honeymoon, Jackson and his bride 
had visited Quebec. They drove out to the plains of 
Abraham and stood by the monument of General 
Wolfe. Reading the inscription, J die content, Jack- 
son said to his bride, ““Who would not be content to 
die in the hour of glorious victory!’ Little did he 
then imagine that he, too, was to be struck down in 
the moment of his greatest achievement. A huge 
granite stone in the midst of the wilderness marks the 
spot where he fell. It is one of the few monuments 
on the field of Chancellorsville, and rightly so. His 
character was rugged and simple like the stone which 
tells the place where he finished his course and fought 
his last fight. One week after, in his delirium order- 
ing A. P. Hill to prepare for action, Jackson crossed 
over the river and rested beneath the shade of the 
trees. His death made Chancellorsville a Pyrrhic vic- 
tory for the South. 

On Sunday morning Stuart carried on the attack 
and finally drove Hooker away from the clearing at 
the Chancellor House, and united his own lines with 
those of Lee. During the fighting on Sunday, Hooker 
was a strange mystery of inaction and torpidity. 
Some assert that he was drunk; others, among them 
Carl Schurz, that too long abstinence accounted for 
his torpid brain. Certain it is that as he was standing 


114 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


on the gallery of the Chancellor House, a ball struck 
the pillar against which he was leaning and he fell to 
the floor in a dazed condition. To the misfortune of 
the army he did not relinquish the command at that 
time. Most of his generals were anxious for battle, 
but he thought only of retreat. 

Meanwhile, Sedgwick had moved across the Rap- 
pahannock and stormed Marye’s Heights. He was 
well on his way to join Hooker when he was checked 
after a fierce fight at Salem Church. On Monday, 
and after a stiff fight, Lee forced him to retire across 
the river. Through all this battle of Salem Church, 
with the sound of the guns in his ears, Hooker lay 
listlessly idle with thousands of men. It is said that 
Salem Church is the only place where Lee ever lost 
his temper. He was displeased that Wilcox and An- 
derson had not followed up their fight of Sunday and 
driven Sedgwick over the river. But so far as the 
issues of the campaign were concerned, there was no 
reason for Lee to lose his temper. Hooker’s great 
army had been flanked, scattered, and finally driven 
across the Rappahannock to their familiar quarters. 
Thus in gloom and humiliation did the campaign which 
had opened with such promise of success come to a 
close. In actual losses the damage was not great. But 
the general failure and miscarriage had elated the 
South and occasioned anger and sorrow in the North. 

The distress of Lincoln over Chancellorsville was 
more poignant than at any time during the war. The 
conditions were not as bad as Lincoln believed them 
to be, and the army, as the Gettysburg campaign im- 
mediately following demonstrated, was still intact and 
in splendid military form. But the great expectations 
of the President and those of the country had again 
been dashed. Noah Brooks, an inmate of the White 
House at the time, thus describes Lincoln’s anguish 
of mind: “I shall never forget that picture of despair. 
He held a telegram in his hand, and as he closed the 


FREDERICKSBURG 115 


door and came towards us, I mechanically noticed that 
his face, usually sallow, was ashen in hue. The paper 
on the wall behind him was of the tint known as 
French gray, and even in that moment of sorrow and 
dread expectation I vaguely took in the thought that 
the complexion of the anguished President’s visage 
was almost exactly like that of the wall. He gave me 
the telegram and in a voice trembling with emotion, 
said, ‘Read it—news from the army.’” (The telegram 
was from Hooker’s chief-of-staff, Butterfield, con- 
firming the rumor that the army had retreated across 
the river.) “The appearance of the President, as I 
read aloud these fateful words, was piteous. Never as 
long as I knew him, did he seem so broken up, so dis- 
pirited and so ghostlike. Clasping his hands behind his 
back, he walked up and down the room, saying, ‘My 
God, my God, what will the country say! What will 
the country say!’ ’”’* 

The night after Chancellorsville, the White House 
was like a funeral. The hopes of the country and the 
administration had once more been blasted. The vast 
expenditure of gold and blood had again come to 
naught. Measureless denunciation and pathetic cries 
for peace poured in upon the President. Who could 
have blamed him if he had yielded to those protests 
and abandoned what seemed to be a hopeless war? All 
through the night Lincoln kept his lonely vigil. The 
secretary, who sat in his room across the hall, heard 
only the ticking of the clock and the tread of the 
President’s feet as he walked up and down in his 
chamber. Our Man or Sorrows was treading his wine- 
press alone, and of the people there was none to help 
him. The battle of Chancellorsville had been lost, but 
Lincoln’s battle was won. The next morning he went 
down to Fredericksburg to comfort his defeated gen- 
eral and to encourage the army and the country. 


*“TLincoln and His Generals,” Macartney, pp. 150, 151. 


x 
GETTYSBURG 
Tuus FAR AND No FARTHER 


Shortly before the Civil War broke out, Robert 
Toombs, of Georgia, the prince of the “fire- 
eaters,’ had declared in the United States Senate 
that he would call the roll of his slaves at the 
foot of Bunker Hill monument. In the last days 
of June, 1863, the advance guard of Lee’s army 
began to pour into Pennsylvania by way of the 
Cumberland Valley, and there were not a few 
alarmists in the North who thought that the 
bombastic boast of Toombs was about to be fulfilled. 

All things considered, the invasion of Pennsyl- 
vania was as rash as the boast of the Georgia 
“fire-eater.’ Some such movement was in Lee’s 
mind when he made the campaign which ended 
at Antietam. Then the victory of Second Bull 
Run suggested the invasion; this time it was the 
victory of Chancellorsville. Lee counted on the 
low morale of the Army of the Potomac. But 
in this he was mistaken. The fiasco in the wilder- 
ness about the Chancellor House had in no way 
disorganized the Union Army or caused it to lose 
heart. The greater part of the army had not been 
thrown into the fight at all, and were only too 
anxious for a fight instead of retreat. From the 
day that Hooker broke camp at Fredericksburg 
up to the last charge at Gettysburg, the soldiers 
of the Army of the Potomac manifested the keen- 
est fighting spirit. The purpose of Lee was to 

116 


COM We Ge de tana e: 117 


secure sustenance for his army in the fertile fields 
of Pennsylvania and Maryland, capture Harris- 
burg, the railroad and recruiting center of the 
North, threaten Philadelphia and Washington, 
and if pursued by the Army of the Potomac, turn 
on it and defeat it on Northern soil. The Con- 
federate leaders hoped that such a victory would 
bring recognition from Europe and compel the 
government at Washington to make a reasonable 
peace. 

By the invasion of Pennsylvania it was hoped, 
too, that Grant would be compelled to loosen his 
hold on the straitly shut up Vicksburg. As a 
means of relief Longstreet had suggested that 
Johnston be sent to reinforce Bragg, who was 
contending with Rosecrans in Tennessee; that 
his (Longstreet’s) division should join Johnston’s 
reinforcements for Brageg’s army, their combined 
forces to strike Rosecrans and then march for 
the Ohio River and Cincinnati. When Lee sub- 
mitted his plan, that of Longstreet was dropped. 

The first division under Ewell reached Cham- 
bersburg on the twenty-fourth of June, and then 
pressed on to Carlisle, and almost to Harrisburg. 
A part of this same division, under command of 
Jubal Early, had marched east of the mountains 
through Gettysburg, and as far as Wrightsville 
on the Susquehanna River. His orders were to 
take the bridge and join the army at Harrisburg. 
The other two corps under Hill and Longstreet 
joined forces at Hagerstown, Maryland, on the 
twenty-fourth of June, the same day that Ewell’s 
corps reached Chambersburg. The plans of Lee 
were working smoothly and the different col- 
umns were doing all that they had been ordered 
to do. 

A glimpse at the map will show how the Cum- 
berland Valley is a continuation, north of the 


118 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Potomac, of the Shenandoah Valley. The Cum- 
berland Valley made a natural avenue of invasion 
and the Shenandoah Valley formed Lee’s lines 
of communication with Richmond. Hooker had 
asked permission of Lincoln to make a raid 
against Richmond, but Lincoln told him that Lee’s 
army was the objective. In characteristic manner 
he wrote that if he went to the south of the 
Rappahannock he would be “like an ox half over 
a fence, liable to be torn by dogs front and rear, 
without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the 
other.” A few days later, when Lee’s advance 
was at Martinsburg, near Harper’s Ferry, and 
the rear just leaving Fredericksburg, Lincoln tele- 
graphed Hooker: “If the head of Lee’s army is 
at Martinsburg and the tail of it on the plank road 
between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the 
animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you 
not break him ?” 

The main divisions of the Confederate cavalry 
under “Jeb” Stuart had been detached from Lee’s 
army for a raid around the Army of the Potomac. 
Lee expected that Stuart would be able to keep in 
touch with the right wing of the army as it ad- 
vanced into Pennsylvania, but Stuart placed the 
Union army between him and the Confederates, 
crossing the Potomac at Rowser’s Ford on June 
27th and raiding through the outskirts of Balti- 
more. At Rockville he captured some of the 
trains of the Union Army and conveyed these to 
Lee. At Hanover, Pennsylvania, he fought a 
rear guard battle with the Federal cavalry under 
Kilpatrick, and then pressed on in the direction 
of Harrisburg, greatly delayed and hampered by 
his captured wagons. He had no news from Lee 
and did not know that the Confederate army had 
turned back from the Susquehanna and was con- 
centrating near Gettysburg. He therefore did 


GETTYSBURG 119 


not reach Carlisle until the afternoon of the 
second day’s battle at Gettysburg. And thus it 
came about that Lee had no cavalry between him 
and the army following him, and stumbled into 
a battle which was both accidental and disastrous. 
The Confederate general, Heath, who commanded 
the division which first met Meade’s advance in 
Gettysburg, declared that the battle was lost be- 
cause of the “absence of the cavalry.” In con- 
trast with the service of the Confederate cavalry 
was that rendered by regular cavalry under 
Bufford, which was scouting ahead of the Union 
army and disclosed the Confederate advance to- 
wards Gettysburg. 

It was only through a scout of Longstreet’s 
that Lee, then at Chambersburg, learned on the 
evening of June 28th that the Federal Army was 
as Frederick City, Maryland, under the command 
of General George Meade. Hooker’s movements 
had been wise and vigorous, and had he retained 
the command he undoubtedly would have regained 
the laurels he had lost at Chancellorsville. When 
at Frederick City he properly asked to have the 
garrison at Harper’s “erry attached to his army. 
His request was refused by Halleck and the War 
Department, not because it was not a sound mili- 
tary measure, for it was the first thing Meade 
did when he took command, but because Halleck 
and Stanton were determined that after the dis- 
astrous campaign of Chancellorsville, Hooker 
should not be entrusted with the conduct of an- 
other battle. Because of the powerful influence 
of the Chase faction in the Cabinet, Hooker was 
not relieved immediately after Chancellorsville, 
but as soon as it was clear that another great 
battle was imminent, steps were taken to make 
him resign his command. 

In the Chancellorsville campaign Hooker was 


120 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


a great disappointment to the country, to Lincoln, 
to the Army of the Potomac and to himself. But 
in the handling of his army during the movements 
which came to a climax in the battle of Gettys- 
burg, Hooker displayed remarkable intuition and 
guided the operations with extraordinary skill. 
The result was that when he handed the com- 
mand over to Meade, the position of the Army of 
the Potomac with relation to the invading Con- 
federate Army was such that a defeat for Lee 
was almost inevitable. Congress quite properly 
recognized the great part Hooker had played in 
the operations before Gettysburg, and in the 
resolution of thanks he was mentioned first of all. 

Meade, Hooker’s successor, was a man forty- 
eight years of age, born in Spain, a graduate of 
West Point, and, like nearly all the prominent 
generals of the North, had resigned from the 
army and entered civil life, only to go back to 
the army before the Mexican War. Most of his 
service had been as an engineer, and after he 
took command of the Army of the Potomac the 
engineers came rapidly to the front. Meade had 
been a critic of Hooker and, when he was awak- 
ened in his tent to receive his commission as com- 
mander, he thought that it was an order placing 
him under arrest. Silent and unboasting, the 
author of no rodomontade, he was a careful, cau- 
tious general who took no risks and fought his 
one great battle wisely and courageously. His 
irritable disposition when in action made him few 
friends, and his fame after the war was disproportion- 
ate to his service. At a Cabinet meeting just before 
Gettysburg was fought, the members were discussing 
the merits of the various corps commanders who 
were being suggested for Hooker’s place. When 
the opinion of Stanton was sought, he said he 
preferred Meade. There was evident surprise, 


GETTYSBURG 121 


for Meade was little known and had none press- 
ing his claims. Stanton was asked about Meade’s 
backers and sponsors. He replied with a laugh, 
“Perhaps that is just the reason why I prefer him. 
He has no backers and sponsors, and is not al- 
ways asking for leave or special privileges. He 
attends to his business and does his work well.” 

The news which Longstreet’s scout had 
brought to Lee, and which ought to have come 
to him long before through his own cavalry, was 
serious enough. Meade was close behind and 
within striking distance of his communications 
with the Shenandoah Valley. In order to keep 
Meade away from his communications Lee or- 
dered his army, which was spread out through 
the Cumberland Valley, to march east of the 
mountains and concentrate at Cashtown, near 
Gettysburg. Jubal Early, who was already east 
of the mountains and about to cross the Susque- 
hanna at Wrightsville, was checked just in time 
and called back to the main army. Gettysburg 
was an accident, so far as the actual staging of 
the fight was concerned. But with Lee’s army 
moving east and south, and Meade’s army march- 
ing north, a conflict somewhere in the vicinity 
of Gettysburg was inevitable. 

Thirty-five miles southwest of Harrisburg, and 
within striking distance of Washington, Balti- 
more, and Philadelphia, Gettysburg lies in a little 
valley well east of the Blue Ridge, or South 
Mountain. It is a typical Pennsylvania county 
seat, with a population of about three thousand. 
The country about it is exceedingly fertile, and 
in comparison with the wilderness about Freder- 
icksburg and Chancellorsville seemed like the 
Promised Land, 


Fair as the Garden of the Lord 
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde. 


122 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Most of the farmers were Germans, popularly 
called “Pennsylvania Dutch.” As a center for 
Germans, Gettysburg was the seat of a college 
and a Lutheran theological seminary. In one 
of the streets of the village there is now to be 
seen a monument to the Gettysburg College 
boys who had a skirmish with Early when he 
passed through the town some days before the 
battle. The old Seminary building stands on a 
ridge west of the town, and from the cupola one 
commands a view of the first day’s conflict. 
Fields brown, yellow and golden are spread out 
before one, dotted here and there with the sub- 
stantial stone houses and enormous barns of the 
thrifty “Dutch.” 

On the thirtieth of June, Pettigrew’s brigade 
of Heth’s division came marching along the road 
from Cashtown. They had been sent to Gettys- 
burg to procure shoes, always a luxury for Con- 
federate soldiers. But as they neared the ridge 
where the seminary stands they were stopped by 
a body of regular cavalry under Bufford. With- 
out their shoes the men of Pettigrew’s brigade 
marched back to Cashtown and reported the pres- 
ence of the enemy. The next morning, July Ist, 
Heth’s whole division was sent forward with or- 
ders to clear the town. Bufford stuck to his post 
and was speedily reinforced by Reynolds, who 
was near at hand with three corps. He had ex- 
pected to draw out the enemy and then retire 
to the lines Meade had prepared at Taneytown, 
Maryland. But Reynolds had his fighting blood 
ae il determined to hold Gettysburg to the last 

itch, 

During the first day’s battle, Bufford, Howard, 
Schurz and Reynolds had their lookout in the 
cupola of the seminary building. Today one can 
see a little in front of the seminary the equestrian 


GETTYSBURG 123 


statue of Reynolds, who fell in the midst of the 
fight. His monument is one of the six hundred 
which dot the field. There are more monuments 
at Gettysburg than on all the other battlefields 
of the world together. Monuments to officers, 
to privates, to generals, to regiments, to divisions, 
to corps. Every possible fancy of the sculptor’s 
art has found expression. The influence of 
Gettysburg upon our national sculpture is note- 
worthy, for at Gettysburg and on the other fields 
of the Civil War sculpture has expressed in bronze 
and stone the hopes and sorrows of the heroic age 
of the nation. Wherever one goes: in the village 
streets, in the woods, by the streams, in the fields 
and on the hilltops, one stumbles upon a crouch- 
ing infantryman, a charging horseman, a dying 
general or a wounded color-bearer. 

One of the most successful statues is the splen- 
did bronze piece on the summit of Little Round 
Top, representing General Warren, the chief en- 
gineer of the Federal Army, looking off to the 
west through his glasses and examining the Con- 
federate lines. Just before the action commenced 
on July 2nd, Warren went to the summit of Little 
Round Top, which was used as a signal station. 
The Union troops posted in front of Little Round 
Top were in the woods and therefore unable to 
see the movements of the Confederates. To guard 
against a surprise Warren ordered the captain of 
a rifle battery to fire into the woods beyond. The 
shot caused a commotion among the Confed- 
erates, and looking through his glasses Warren 
saw the glistening of gun barrels and bayonets in 
the enemy’s line of battle, then drawn up in a 
position to outflank the left wing of the Union 
army. Warren immediately sent a hurry call to 
Meade for troops. As he rode down from the 
summit he met a detachment of troops from the 


124 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Fifth Corps and at once ordered them to take a 
position on Little Round Top. This prompt 
action of Warren played a great part in saving 
the day for the Union Army. 

There is nothing in this sea of monuments and 
tablets which brings back the battle like this 
statue of Warren. As one climbs to the top of 
the hill and comes suddenly upon the statue, 
placed on the very edge of the rocks, one can 
hardly believe that one is not looking upon flesh 
and blood. The subsequent career of General 
Warren had an element of tragedy init. He rose 
to the command of the 5th Corps under Meade 
and Grant and did valiant service in the move- 
ments against Richmond and Petersburg. At the 
battle of Five Forks Sheridan was dissatisfied 
with the manner in which Warren brought up his 
corps, and by the authority of Grant, whose 
favorite Sheridan was, relieved him of his com- 
mand. With Appomattox just eight days away, 
this was a sad ending to the career of the general 
who had contributed so much to the ultimate 
victory. Warren asked Sheridan to reconsider his 
action. Sheridan replied, “Reconsider? hell! I 
never reconsider my orders!” In the administra- 
tion of President Hayes, Warren was exonerated 
by the court of inquiry, but misfortune followed 
him even to the end, for he died before the de- 
cision of the court was made known. So deeply 
did he feel the wrong which had been done him, 
that he requested that he be not buried in his 
uniform and that there should be no military 
display and no emblems of his profession about 
his coffin. When the grand review of the vic- 
torious armies was held in Washington on the 
twenty-third and twenty-fourth of May, 1865, 
General Warren, having been relieved, was not 
with the troops; but when the 5th Corps, now 


GETTYSBURG v2) 


under Griffin, marched past the reviewing stand 
where Warren stood, he was greeted with tu- 
multuous cheers by the men who had followed 
him in many a hard-fought battle. Not until 
Hayes was President was Warren able to get a 
hearing, and then, too late, the stigma was lifted 
from his name. 

After the fall of General Reynolds the com- 
mand of the Union Army on the scene of fight- 
ing devolved upon Doubleday and then upon 
Howard. Howard might have held the field 
against the Confederates if Slocum, who was not 
far away with the 12th Corps, had immediately 
been sent forward to his aid. But Slocum was 
under the orders of Meade and knowing that 
Meade’s plan was not to fight at Gettysburg, it 
was not till late in the afternoon that his corps 
came to the help of Howard, for Meade as yet 
knew nothing of the first day’s engagement. But 
a more determining factor in the repulse of the 
Union advance was the timely arrival of Jubal 
Early on his way back from the Susquehanna. 
His division was thrown in on the Union right, 
flanking the 11th Corps and compelling the with- 
drawal of the entire line. With considerable dis- 
order and with the loss of several thousand 
prisoners, the retreat was made through Gettys- 
bring to the hills beyond, and thus in disaster and 
gloom the first day’s battle came to an end. 

News of the fight and rumors of the death of 
Reynolds had reached Meade at his headquarters 
at Taneytown, in Maryland. Howard ranked 
Hancock, but the latter possessed the full confi- 
dence of Meade, and he ordered him to Gettys- 
burg to take command of the troops and decide 
whether or not to make a stand there. Hancock 
reclined in an ambulance wagon as it thundered 
over the pike leading to Gettysburg, studying a 


126 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


map of the field. Near Gettysburg he met the 
body of the fallen Reynolds. When he reached 
the field the remnants of the Ist and 11th Corps 
were being put in position on Cemetery Hill. He 
approved the position taken by Howard, and after 
assisting in the forming of the lines, turned the 
command over to Slocum and went back to tell 
Meade that this was the place to fight. Howard 
afterwards received the thanks of Congress for 
selecting Cemetery Hill as a line of battle. But 
whether Howard or Hancock was responsible for 
the position, it was one of great natural strength, 
and one need not be a soldier to appreciate that 
fact. Yet strong as it was, the broken and routed 
divisions which had just retreated through the 
village could hardly have held the hills against 
a determined attack that night. Lee thought that 
Early should “press those people,” but left it to 
the discretion of his subordinate. If the attack 
had been made that night, there would have 
been no second day’s fight, for the whole Con- 
federate Army was closing in, and the Union 
Army was still scattered, with headquarters at 
Taneytown. All that night the pick and shovel 
rang among the graves on Cemetery Hill and all 
through the night the roads from the south re- 
sounded with the tramp of the advancing divi- 
sions, and by morning Lee confronted a vast army 
in lines of great natural strength. His oppor- 
tunity was gone. But Lee and his whole staff, 
with the exception of Longstreet, suffered that 
day from overconfidence. The history of the 
second and third day was a gallant attempt to do 
the impossible. 

Longstreet relates that as he and General Lee 
were riding along Seminary Ridge and viewing 
the Federal position, Lee struck the air with his 
clenched fist and declared, “If he is there tomor- 


GETTYSBURG 127 


row I will attack him.” To which Longstreet 
replied, “If he is there tomorrow, it will be be- 
cause he wants you to attack. If that height has 
become the objective, why not take it at once? 
We have forty thousand men, less the casualties 
of the day. He cannot have more than twenty 
thousand.” One of Longstreet’s officers, J. S. D. 
Cullen, relates that when he congratulated Long- 
street upon the events of the first day, Long- 
street remarked that it would have been better 
not to have fought at all than to have stopped 
when they did, and that the enemy had been left 
in a position that it would take the whole Confed- 
erate Army to drive them from and then at a 
great sacrifice. ) 

Longstreet opposed the plan and urged Lee to 
slip around the Union Army and get between it 
and Washington. He comments on Lee’s tactics 
at Gettysburg in these words, “That he was ex- 
cited and off his balance was evident on the after- 
noon of the Ist, and he labored under that op- 
pression until enough blood was shed to appease 
him.” 

On the second day Lee’s plan of battle was to 
turn both flanks of Meade’s army, the heaviest 
attack to be made by Longstreet on the Union 
right. Most Southerners are profane when the 
name of Longstreet is mentioned in connection 
with the battle. He is charged with delaying the 
attack which had been ordered for the morning 
until four in the afternoon. However that may 
have been, when he finally did move it was with 
his accustomed vigor. Sickles had taken an ad- 
vanced position on the Union left which separated 
him from the Union center. Against this posi- 
tion in the peach orchard Longstreet hurled his 
men and drove the 3rd Corps back against Little 
Round Top. For a little it seemed as if he would 


128 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


succeed in getting round the Union left, but after 
a sanguinary struggle in the wheatfield and in the 
Devil’s Den, a gorge of huge rocks, his men gave 
up the effort. All that he had succeeded in doing 
was to drive the Union left into proper alignment 
with the rest of the army. Instead of attacking 
the left end of the Union line, Longstreet thought 
that Lee ought to manoeuvre Meade out of his 
strong position on the hills. General Hood, who 
led the Confederate attack on the Union left, de- 
spite his fiery, impetuous disposition, had no hope 
of accomplishing anything by his attack, and 
asked permission to move around Big Round Top 
where the Union trains were parked. To this re- 
quest Longstreet sent back the answer: “Gen- 
eral Lee’s orders are to attack up the Emmetts- 
burgh Road.” Again Hood sent back a staff 
officer asking for a change of orders, and again 
the response came back: “General Lee’s orders 
are to attack up the Emmettsburgh Road.” When, 
after a third protest, Lee’s orders were repeated 
to him through Longstreet, General Hood ordered 
his men to make the assault. 

Meanwhile, Lee had been operating on the 
Union right. Rodes and Early, both of Ewell’s 
Corps, attacked Cemetery Hill, while Johnson at- 
tacked Culp’s Hill at the extreme right of the 
Union line. Rodes and Early failed to co-operate 
properly and the attack was a failure, although 
Early got well into the Federal lines before he 
was driven out. The great spectacle in the fight- 
ing on this part of the field was the charge of the 
“Louisiana Tigers’ at dusk on Cemetery Hill. 
But for the greater glory of Pickett’s charge the 
next day, the fierce assault of these rough des- 
peradoes of the Mississippi River might have gone 
down in history as the high-water mark of 
Southern valor. Of seventeen hundred “Tigers” 


AdusIg pue uoqqly ‘MOTIeg s[etguer) :Sulpurys 


MOOODNVH “IVAAHNHD 











GETTYSBURG 129 


only three hundred got back to the Confederate 
lines. Johnson at Culp’s Hill was more success- 
ful, for Meade had withdrawn a part of the 12th 
Corps to help Sickles on the left. He succeeded 
in getting a position where he could threaten the 
Union right, and from which it was necessary to 
drive him the next morning. 

After the conflict had subsided on the evening 
of the second of July, Meade called a council of 
war at his headquarters back of the Union center 
on Cemetery Hill. Weary and worn, the different 
corps commanders filed into the little room in 
the Leicester cabin, Newton of the lst, Hancock 
of the 2nd, Birney of the 3rd, Sykes, the 5th, Sedg- 
wick, the 6th, just arrived from Manchester, 
Howard, the ill-starred 11th, Slocum, the 12th, 
General Butterfield, chief of staff, General War- 
ren, chief of engineers; Williams and Gibbons, 
attached to the 12th and 2nd, respectively, and 
General Meade. Meade’s scholarly face was fur- 
rowed with anxiety as he sat at the table and 
questioned his lieutenants, some of them sitting 
on the floor, others on the bed and on the few 
chairs, while Warren, wounded in the neck by the 
fragment of a shell, lay down on the floor and fell 
asleep. 

General Meade propounded three questions to 
his council. First, should the army remain in its 
present position, or retire to another nearer its 
base of supplies? Newton thought the position 
bad and that the lines should be arranged, but all 
voted not to retreat. The second question read: 
“It being determined to remain in the present 
position, should the army attack or wait the at- 
tack of the enemy?” All voted not to attack ex- 
cept Howard, who advised waiting as long as 
four o'clock, and then attack. In answer to the 
third question: “If we wait attack, how long?” 


130 HIGHWAYSVANDIBYWAWS 


Sedgwick and William voted one day, Howard till 
four the next day, and Hancock said indefinitely 
that the army could not long remain idle Slocum voted 
to “stay and fight it out.” When the voting was 
over, Meade said to the officers about him, “Such, 
then, is your decision.” As the council broke up, 
Meade said to Gibbon of the 2nd Corps, “If Lee 
attacks tomorrow, it will be on your front.” 
Asked for an explanation, Meade answered that 
he had failed on both flanks and if he tried again, 
it would be at the center. 

While Meade and his corps commanders were 
holding their conference, Lee was meeting with 
his lieutenants and making plans for the next 
day. He was encouraged by the arrival of the 
belated Stuart with the cavalry, and Pickett’s 
fresh division of veteran Virginia troops had been 
brought up from Chambersburg. The Confed- 
erate leader still had the confidence of victory and 
his troops shared that confidence. His plan was, 
as the astute Meade had foreseen, to break the 
Union center and have Stuart ready to fall on the 
broken army from the rear. Meantime the weary 
Union soldiers, those who had fought, and those 
who had suffered the greater hardship of a forced 
march, lay resting among the rocks and boulders 
of Round Top, back of the stone fences on Ceme- 
tery Hill, and in the woods to the rear of their 
lines. A mile away on the opposite ridge slept 
the war-worn Confederates, dreaming of the spoils 
of Harrisburg, Baltimore, Washington and Phila- 
delphia. During the night of the second the 
thirsty and wounded soldiers of both armies came 
to fill their canteens and bathe their wounds at 
a spring on the Spangler farm, at the extreme 
right of the Federal lines. One touch of nature 
made the blue and the gray kin once more. Now 
walled and arched, this quiet woodland spring, 


GETTYSBURG 131 


flowing serenely beneath the oaks and the hicko- 
ries, breathes a heavenly rebuke to the hate and 
passion of war. On a summer’s day in July, or 
in the autumn, when the fields are brown and the 
leaves are red, veterans of Lee and veterans of 
Meade, wearied now with a few hours’ walk over 
a field where once they fought for three days and 
three nights unceasingly and untiringly, sit thus 
by the well, dreaming the dreams of old men 
where once they saw the visions of the young. 

The wonderful popularity of McClellan with the 
Army of the Potomac is shown by an incident 
which occurred during the forced march of the 
6th Corps under Sedgwick from Manchester, 
twenty-six miles from Gettysburg, on the night 
of the first. Half-way to Gettysburg the panting, 
perspiring men were halted, formed in hollow 
squares, and orders, as if from headquarters, were 
read to them stating that the army was under 
command of General George B. McClellan. The 
night air was rent with cheers, for the name of 
“Little Mac” was to the soldiers of the Army of 
the Potomac what the name of Bonaparte was to 
the soldiers of France. 

From early morning till one o’clock a profound 
quiet brooded over the field of battle. At the 
stroke of one, there was a tongue of flame and a 
puff of smoke on Seminary Ridge where the 
Washington Artillery was stationed. In a mo- 
ment the whole Confederate line was ablaze with 
the fire of nearly two hundred cannon. A few 
caissons were blown up, but otherwise the great 
play of artillery did little damage to the Union 
Army, which lay safely hidden behind the stone 
fences on the opposite ridge. From his station 
on Little Round Top Warren had seen the forma- 
tion of a strong body of troops back of the Con- 
federate lines, as if for a charge. He communi- 


£32 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


cated his discovery to the Union chief of artillery, 
Hunt, who ceased firing, had his caissons refilled, 
dismounted guns, and dead and wounded car- 
ried to the rear. It was at this time that the 
Confederate leaders thought they saw their op- 
portunity and sent Pickett forward. Five years 
after the war Mosby and Pickett were standing 
together in the Jefferson Hotel, at Richmond, 
when General Lee passed them. Pickett ex- 
claimed with feeling, “That old man! He had 
my division massacred at Gettysburg.” To which 
Mosby replied, ‘““Well, it made you immortal!” 

When word came from Alexander that the 
Union guns had ceased firing, Longstreet and 
Pickett were sitting side by side on the grass. 
Pickett sprang to his feet and looking to Long- 
street said, “General, shall I go forward?’ Un- 
able to speak the order which he was convinced 
must end in disaster, Longstreet grasped Pickett 
by the hand and bowed his head. The next mo- 
ment Pickett was on his horse and off at a gallop. 
In a few minutes he came riding back to Long- 
street and handed him a letter addressed to his 
fiancée at Richmond. On the back of the en- 
velope he had written in pencil, “If Old Peter's 
(Longstreet’s sobriquet) nod means death, good- 
bye, and God bless you, little one!” As he went 
to the head of his lines again, Wilcox rode up and 
taking a flask from his pocket, said, “Pickett, take 
a drink with me. In an hour, you'll be in hell or 
glory.” Pickett refused to drink, saying, “I 
promised the little girl who is waiting and pray- 
ing for me down in Virginia that I would keep 
fresh upon my lips, until we should meet again, 
the breath of the violets she gave me when we 
parted. Whatever my fate, Wilcox, I shall try 
to do my duty like a man, and I hope that, by 


GETTYSBURG 133 


that little girl’s prayer, I shall today reach either 
glory or glory.” 

Perhaps the finest monument at Gettysburg is 
the Virginia Memorial, which represents Lee 
seated on “Traveler” and looking off over the 
fields towards the clump of trees which was the 
objective of the Confederate assault. The visitor 
at Gettysburg is surprised to find that the charge 
was not made up a steep and rugged hill, but 
over a gently rising slope of fields and meadows. 
After the skirmishers had cleared away the fences 
and other obstacles, the assaulting column of fif- 
teen thousand men, with the blue flag of Virginia 
floating proudly at their head, marched forward 
as if on dress parade through the streets of Rich- 
mond. For seven-eighths of a mile they had to 
march without cover and exposed to the fearful 
fire of the Federal batteries.* First, solid shot 
began to plow through their ranks; then, grape 
and canister, and finally, the more deadly hail of 
bullets. Pickett’s men did about all they were 
asked to do. They pierced the Union center and 
took some of the guns and for a few minutes the 
Stars and the Bars floated amid the smoke and 
carnage at the stone wall. But they had been left 
without support and the Union regiments quickly 
closed in on them. Lee’s report of the battle tells 
the secret of their failure: “They deserved suc- 
cess as far as it can be deserved by human valor 
and fortitude. More may have been required of 
them than they were able to perform.” 

*On my first visit to Gettysburg, I had a conversation with 
a Professor Douthitt, of the University of West Virginia, who 
was going over the battlefield. He had been a captain in 
Pickett’s division, and was one of the very few officers who 
went through the charge unwounded. He told me that the 


moment they emerged from the wood they realized that they 
had started on a dangerous and hopeless undertaking. 


134 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Lieutenant-Colonel Freemantle, of the British Army, 
who was at the Confederate headquarters during 
the battle of Gettysburg, in his Three Months in the 
Southern States, thus describes the conduct of General 
Lee after the disaster which befell Pickett: “If Long- 
street’s conduct was admirable, that of General 
Lee was perfectly sublime. He was engaged in 
rallying and in encouraging the broken troops, 
and was riding about a little in front of the wood, 
quite alone—the whole of his staff being engaged 
in a similar manner further to the rear. His face, 
which is always placid and cheerful, did not show 
signs of the slightest disappointment, care or an- 
noyance; and he was addressing to every soldier 
he met a few words of encouragement, such as, 
‘All this will come right in the end: we'll talk it 
over afterwards; but, in the meantime, all good 
men must rally. We want all good and true men 
just now,’ etc. He spoke to all the wounded men 
that passed him, and the slightly wounded he ex- 
horted ‘to bind up their hurts and take up a 
musket’ in this emergency. Very few failed to 
answer his appeal, and I saw many badly wounded 
men take off their hats and cheer him. He said 
to me, ‘This has been a sad day for us, Colonel— 
a sad day; but we can’t expect always to gain 
victories.’ He was also kind enough to advise me 
to get into some more sheltered position, as the 
shells were bursting round us with considerable 
frequency.” 

The Confederate wave of attack was rolling 
back, spent.and broken, when Meade rode up to 
the ridge from Slocum’s headquarters and, learn- 
ing of the repulse, ejaculated a fervent “Thank 
God!” That exclamation tells the story of the 
escape of Lee’s army and failure of Meade to reap 
the fruits of victory. “Up, Guards, and at them!” 
was the order which might naturally have been 
expected. As he lay wounded on the ground, 


GETTYSBURG 135 


waiting for the ambulance, Hancock wrote a note 
to Meade urging him to make a counter attack. 
Had such an attack been made, Lee’s army, with 
ammunition chests almost empty, must surely 
have been destroyed. Reinforcements were being 
hurried to Meade from all directions, and Lee 
could not hope for a single man. Yet he was per- 
mitted to steal away unmolested and take several 
thousand prisoners with him. Meade thanked 
God for what he had gained and was content. The 
day after the battle rain commenced to fall 
in torrents, and Meade was seen sitting in the 
open on a stone, his head supported by his hands. 
What mattered the rain? He had saved his coun- 
try. After three days’ hail of lead and rivers of 
blood, the downpour of the heavens seemed like 
a benediction. 

While the great conflict was raging in the 
center, the cavalry had been active on both wings. 
On the Union left the dashing Kilpatrick, after- 
wards to gain invidious reputation on the march 
from Atlanta to the sea, was in command, and 
on the right, Gregg. Just two days before 
the battle opened, Captain E. J. Farnsworth, 
of the 8th Illinois Cavalry, was promoted to the 
rank of brigadier-general. There was no time 
for him to secure a new uniform and General 
Pleasonton generously divided his wardrobe with 
him, giving him his blue coat with a single star 
and soft black hat. Kilpatrick had been eagerly 
waiting for a chance to “get his eye in” and when 
the news came of the repulse of Pickett’s charge, 
he decided to throw Farnsworth’s brigade against 
the Texan infantry on the extreme right of the 
Confederate line. Realizing the desperate nature 
of the charge, Farnsworth said to Kilpatrick, 
“General, do you mean it? Shall I throw my 
handful of men over rough ground, through 


136 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


timber, against a brigade of infantry?” Kilpatrick 
answered with heat, “Do you refuse to obey or- 
ders? If you are afraid to lead this charge, I will 
lead it!” Rising in his stirrups, Farnsworth cried 
with passion, “Take that back!” Kilpatrick at 
first returned the defiance, but gaining mastery 
of himself, said to Farnsworth, “I did not mean it; 
forget it.” Farnsworth then rode to the head of 
his column and led his men in a magnificent but 
hopeless charge. He fell after he had penetrated 
the enemy’s lines for a distance of two miles. 
When Andrew D. White, afterwards president 
of Cornell and minister to Germany, took up his 
duties as professor of history in Michigan Univer- 
sity, he was troubled by a group of sophomores 
in one of his classes. Among the obstreporous 
youth he noticed one tall, blackbearded man with 
a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and soon saw 
that he was the leader in all the annoying demon- 
strations. White asked him to remain after the 
class was dismissed and said to him, “I see that 
either you or I must leave the University.” The 
student feigned indignation and asked for an ex- 
planation. White reminded him that he himself 
had only recently been a student, that he knew 
their ways, and that if the disorderly demonstra- 
tions continued, one of them would be compelled 
to leave, adding, “I believe the trustees will prefer 
your departure to mine.” After reflection the re- 
fractory student decided to mend his ways and 
White soon had no better student or firmer friend 
in the University. Two years later, the Univer- 
sity was shocked by the news of a wretched 
carousal in which this young man was a leading 
spirit. One of the students lay dead at the 
coroner's rooms. Eight students were expelled, 
among them this man. On leaving the University 
he went to White and thanked him for what he 


GETTYSBURG 137 


had done for him, acknowledged the justice of the 
actions of the faculty, but expressed the hope that 
he would yet show that he could make a man of 
himself. Five years later that student fell at the 
head of his brigade at Gettysburg. It was Farns- 
worth. He had made good his promise. 

Among the fallen on the Union side was Robert 
Livingstone, the son of the great apostle to Africa. 
He was of a restless, roaming disposition, and had 
gone out to Africa hoping to join his father. Un- 
able to reach him, he made his way to America 
and landed in Boston while the war was raging. 
He enlisted in a Massachusetts regiment and fell 
at Gettysburg in his nineteenth year. Before his 
father knew of his death, he wrote to a friend, 
“I hope your eldest boy will do well in the distant 
land to which he has gone. My son is in the 
Federal Army in America, and no comfort. The 
secret ballast is often supplied by a kind hand 
above, when to outsiders we appear to be sailing 
gloriously with the wind.” Here was another 
wayward boy who, like thousands of others, re- 
deemed himself by offering the greatest of all 
sacrifices. Nor was it unfitting that the son of 
the man who had done so much to loose the bonds 
of the African slave, should have perished in that 
field concerning whose dead Lincoln said, “They 
here gave the last full measure of devotion.” 

Lee’s retreat commenced the night of the third 
and was continued through the fourth of July. 
There was little opportunity to care for the 
wounded, and they were hurriedly thrown into the 
ambulances, the drivers of which with oath and 
whip, urged their horses and mules towards the 
mountains, in hourly dread of the Union cavalry. 
“Oh God! Why can’t I die!” was a cry which 
came from these wagons of pain, and by the time 
this vast procession of misery had passed through 


138 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Monterey Gap and reached Hagerstown, the 
prayer of many a wounded soldier had been 
answered and the dead were taken from among 
the dying. When Lee reached the Potomac, the 
rains had swollen the river and he had to intrench 
and wait for the waters to subside. Meade did 
not attack, and by the fourteenth, the Confederate 
Army was safe in Virginia. President Lincoln 
spoke of this time when Lee was waiting at the 
bend of the Potomac as one of the three times 
when the war might have been brought to a close. 
When he learned of Lee’s escape, he wrote Meade 
an angry letter, concluding with these words, 
“Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am dis- 
tressed immeasurably because of it.” But ere the 
sun went down his wrath abated and the letter 
was never sent. It was indeed a golden oppor- 
tunity which presented itself to Meade, and the 
nation was too ready to forget what Meade had 
done because it was amazed at what he had leit 
undone. 

General Longstreet, in his account of Gettys- 
burg, relates the following amusing incident: “As 
we approached Hagerstown, two grotesque fig- 
ures stepped into the road about a hundred yards 
in front of us—one a negro of six feet and a hun- 
dred and eighty pounds, the other a white man 
of about five feet seven. The negro was dressed 
in full uniform of the Union infantry, the white 
man in travel-stained butternut drygoods. The 
negro had a musket on his shoulder. Riding up 
to them, it was observed that the musket was 
at the cock-notch. The negro was reminded that 
it was unsoldierlike to have the gun at a cock, but 
said that he wanted to be ready to save and de- 
liver his prisoner to the guard; it was his proud- 
est capture during the march, and he wanted 
credit for it. The man was a recruit lately from 


GETTYSBURG 139 


abroad, and did not seem to care whether or not 
he was with his comrades. However, there were 
doubts if he understood a word that was said. 
The uniform was a tight fit, and the shoes were 
evidently painful, but the black man said that he 
could exchange them. He was probably the only 
man of the army who had a proud story to take 
home.”’ 

Another incident of the retreat related by 
A. A. Long, Lee’s military secretary, shows, on 
the one hand, the love and loyalty of the Northern 
soldiers for the Union and, on the other, the 
kindness of heart of General Lee. A Union 
soldier had been desperately wounded during the 
battle on the third day. As General Lee and his 
staff rode past the place where he was lying, the 
soldier, although faint from exposure and loss of 
blood, recognized the Confederate commander 
and, raising himself up on his arm, shouted as 
loudly as he could, “Hurrah for the Union!” Lee 
heard the shout and, stopping his horse, dis- 
mounted and walked across the road to where the 
man lay. The soldier thought that Lee meant 
to kill him, but when he came near, with a sad 
expression on his face Lee extended to him his 
hand and, looking into his eyes, said, “My son, 
I hope you will soon be well.” As soon as Lee 
had mounted his horse and ridden on, the soldier, 
with all bitterness gone, cried himself to sleep 
upon the bloody ground. 

Not far from the stone wall in “Bloody Angle, 
where Armistead fell, with his hat on his sword, 
and crying, “Give them the cold steel, boys!” and 
where Cushing fired his last round, there is a 
clump of oak trees which Lee had indicated as 
the objective point of the charge. In the shade 
of these oaks there is a monument which is 
rightly named the high-water mark of the Rebel- 


bP] 


140 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


lion. That plot of ground marks the flood-tide, 
not only of Southern valor and devotion, but also 
of the South’s armed resistance to the United 
States. Great battles were still to be fought, but 
from the moment that Pickett’s men reeled back- 
wards from Cemetery Ridge the Confederacy 
was a sinking tide. Like the tide of the ocean 
it was to come back again in white fury at 
Chickamauga and the Salient at Spottsylvania. 
But it was the fury of a tide going down the 
beach. 

Fifty years after the sun had set that fourth of 
July over that field of pain and hate and blood, 
he looked down upon that same field. But how 
different was the scene which he beheld! Orders 
again had been sent out for both armies to con- 
centrate at Gettysburg. They had come from the 
north, south, east, west; from Maine, from 
Florida, from California, from Oregon. But alas! 
Time, the great conqueror, has taken his toll of 
them and their step is not so brisk nor their 
shoulders so square as when last they gathered 
there. But still they come, company after com- 
pany, regiment after regiment. Where once they 
marched and fought in the vigor of their youth, 
now they go slowly and softly, leaning upon the 
arms of stalwart sons or supported by tender and 
solicitous daughters. Many of them ought never 
to have come; but in their eyes one sees the grim, 
determined look which says, “I must see Gettys- 
burg or die!’ And when they reach home again 
it will be with all desire for travel satisfied, and 
their prayer will be the Nunc Dinutis of Simeon 
when he had seen the Lord’s Anointed, “Now, 
Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!” 

Now the curses, the horrible wounds festering 
in the July sun, the blood, the sweat, the hunger, 
the exhaustion, the passion of battle, the inex- 


GETTYSBURG 141 


orable aloofness of death—the only noble thing 
on the so-called “field of glory’—all that is past 
and forgotten. There they are by the thousands, 
these men of the ’Sixties, many of them with the 
scars of the fight on their bodies, many of them 
deaf from the roar of the artillery, many of them 
crippled with rheumatism contracted lying in the 
rain and on the snow. But time has healed the 
bitterness, as the ivy covers the disfiguration of 
some fallen tower. Last night I went up to the 
cupola of the Lutheran Seminary, where Rey- 
nolds, Howard and Bufford had their lookout on 
the first day of the battle. The sun had gone 
down behind the Blue Ridge and the cool of the 
evening had come, almost as dear to the sweating 
thousands of old men in their tents as it was to 
them after the hard day’s fight fifty years before. 
To the west I could see the dim outline of the 
South Mountain, through which Lee’s men poured 
into the valley where Gettysburg lies. Just in 
front were the regimental monuments marking 
the first line of battle, where Heth’s men with- 
stood the Ist Corps. To the left the equestrian 
statue of the gallant Reynolds, who fell early in 
the fight; to the right Oak Hill, where Jubal 
Early outilanked the 11th Corps and drove the 
Northern army in confusion and defeat through 
the streets of Gettysburg; then the little county 
seat, with its few thousand inhabitants, and be- 
yond, the hills where Howard drew up the beaten 
army—Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Hill, Cemetery 
Ridge, Little Round Top and Big Round Top. 
On the lawn of the seminary grounds a military 
band played The Star-Spangled Banner as the 
sunset guns roared on Cemetery Ridge. The vast 
encampment where the fifty thousand veterans 
lay together was ablaze with thousands of electric 
lights. Martial airs were carried on the night 


142 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


winds, for old drummers and fifers were at work 
again, and out of the camp and town came the 
music of Yankee Doodle, Dixie and The Girl I 
Left Behind Me. Now neither army feared the 
coming of the dawn, for the new day would bring 
only more reunions, more recollections, more 
good-fellowship and song. Hear the old fellows 
singing together where they stabbed and bay- 
oneted one another fifty years ago! O that Lin- 
coln, our Man of Sorrows, could have been there! 
O that Lee might have sat on “Traveler” once 
more and heard the songs and learned how time 
had healed the bitterness of the past and made 
the nation one and inseparable, now and forever. 
Now the lights go out and the old men are asleep, 
dreaming the dreams of fifty years ago, when 
they waited for bugle and cannon and musket to 
summon them to the carnage of the battle. Sleep 
on, dream on, old grizzled heroes! Good-night, 
old man in blue! Good-bye, old man in gray! 


XI 
VICKSBURG 
Tue Mississtpp1 UNVEXED 


“The fate of the Confederacy was sealed when 
Vicksburg fell.” That was Grant’s comment on 
the significance of his campaign against the river 
fortress. It sealed the fate of the Confederacy, 
for the surrender of Vicksburg, followed in a few 

days by the surrender of Port Hudson, left the 
' Mississippi open from New Orleans to Cairo, and 
rent the seceding states in twain. 

The first attempt to take Vicksburg ended in 
failure, when Sherman with the advance of 
Grant’s army made a bloody and unsuccessful as- 
sault at Chickasaw Bayou, nine miles up the 
Yazoo from Vicksburg. .This was on the twenty- 
ninth of December, 1862. From then on until 
Grant threw his army across the river south of 
the city in the great rear attack that was to bring 
victory, the history of the campaign is the story 
of a succession of always baffled efforts to take 
the city. The right flank of the defenses of 
Vicksburg was Haynes’ Bluff on the Yazoo River, 
and if the city was to be approached from the 
north, some way had to be found of getting into 
the rear of that point, for the place could not be 
stormed. The Mississippi River washed the 
bluffs of Vicksburg and the batteries were so 
placed that boats attempting to run down or up 
the river would be under fire for a distance of not 
less than fourteen miles. If the city could not be 


143 


144 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


taken on the north, it might be taken by landing 
an army on the east side of the river, south of 
the fortresses. But the problem was how to get 
the army down the river to a place where they 
could land without running the dangerous bat- 
teries. Two efforts were made to get into the 
Yazoo River above the works at Haynes’ Bluff 
and find a landing place from which the army 
could take Vicksburg from the rear, and two were 
made to get the army across the Mississippi at a 
point south of Vicksburg. These undertakings 
were titanic in their proportions, feats of digging 
and engineering beyond that of the Medes and 
Persians when they diverted the Euphrates from 
its course, turning it into the canals Nebuchad- 
nezzar had built at Sippara, and marching by the 
emptied river-bed into Babylon; but all were 
doomed to complete failure. 

In earlier days, steamers plying between 
Memphis and Vicksburg left the main channel 
of the Mississippi at Yazoo Pass, a hundred and 
fifty miles north of Vicksburg, and steamed down 
the Caldwater River into the Tallahatchie and 
thence down the Yazoo River, entering the 
Mississippi a short distance above Vicksburg. But 
in recent years the channel from the Mississippi 
in the Yazoo Pass had been closed by a levee. 
From Muilliken’s Bend, opposite Vicksburg, where 
Grant’s army lay, to the point on the Yazoo River 
where troops could be disembarked, the distance 
by way of these several streams was not less than 
seven hundred miles. On the second of Febru- 
ary the levee was broken and the tawny flood of 
the great river was poured into the abandoned 
pass. Before the channel had risen to the level 
of the Mississippi, the gunboats and transports 
were rushing down with the angry waters. They 
negotiated the pass in safety but were stopped 


VICKSBURG 145 


by a fort which the Confederates had erected 
where the Tallahatchie and the Yallabusha unite 
to form the Yazoo River. The attack made by 
the fleet was unsuccessful, due in part to the 
mental aberration of the commander, Watson 
Smith, and to a lack of co-operation on the ‘part 
of the army. 

Still another effort was made to get from the 
Mississippi into the Yazoo at a point north of the 
forts at Haynes’ Bluff. Near Milliken’s Bend on 
the Mississippi, an opening was discovered by 
which boats could pass from the Mississippi into 
Steele’s Bayou, thence by a series of bayous and 
creeks into the Yazoo River where troops could 
be disembarked north of the forts at Haynes’ 
Bluff. Early in March, Porter steamed into 
Steele’s Bayou with the gunboats, followed by 
the troops on small steamers and under command 
of Sherman. It was a veritable wilderness of 
forest tangles and watery wastes where the slug- 
gish bayous had not been parted by the prow of 
a boat since the day that the rude canoe of the 
savage had glided through the vast solitudes. As 
the fleet pushed its way through the narrow 
channels, thousands of birds, astonished at the 
strange invasion, rose in their flight, making the 
woods resound with their raucous cries and dark- 
ening the heavens with the multitude of their 
host. As the steamers and gunboats proceeded, 
the gigantic and Briarean arms of the trees swept 
away smokestacks, small boats and all that was 
movable, and huge, dead limbs crashed with 
menace on the decks. In places the channel was 
blocked by trees two feet in diameter. Against 
these the gunboats were driven under a full head 
of steam. When the tree had been rammed, block 
and tackle were applied and it was hoisted out of 
the way. By the time he reached the Rolling 


146 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Fork, Porter found his way blocked by the enemy, 
who had compelled crews of negroes to fell trees 
in his front as well as in his rear. The rudders 
were unshipped and he began to back out of his 
dangerous position, all the time under the fire of 
sharpshooters who lurked in the thickets along 
the banks. He was like a lion caught in the net, 
and it might have gone ill with him, had not 
Sherman, marching his men through the woods 
by the light of blazing pine torches, come to his 
rescue. Then the whole expedition withdrew. 

Let us now turn to the efforts made to land 
the army on the east bank of the Mississippi at a 
point south of Vicksburg. Seventy miles north of 
Vicksburg, and about a mile from the channel 
of the river, is Lake Providence, a part of the old 
bed of the river. It had a swampy outlet into 
Baxter Bayou, which again led through several 
rivers and bayous into the Red River, and the 
Red into the Mississippi. Thus, by a journey of 
more than four hundred miles, troops could be 
brought into the Mississippi and landed south of 
Vicksburg. When the levee was cut and the 
Mississippi let into Lake Providence, it was hoped 
that navigation would be possible. But in Baxter 
Bayou a wilderness of cypress trees was en- 
countered, the task of cutting a passage through 
proved too formidable, and the project was aban- 
doned. 

If the reader will look at a map of the Missis- 
sippi, he will see how the volatile river, when it 
reaches the neighborhood of Vicksburg, describes 
a great loop, first flowing to the northeast until 
about two miles above the city, then turning 
abruptly to the southwest, until at a point about 
a mile distant from where it turns to the north- 
east it resumes its journey to the Gulf. Grant’s 
baffled host lay encamped on the high ground at 


VICKSBURG 147 


Milliken’s Bend, beholding the city of their desire 
but unable to approach it. If the neck of the 
peninsula created by the river were cut open, the 
troops could be transported south of the city with 
no danger from the batteries. Thousands of men 
were set to work to dig the canal and change the 
course of the river, with the plan of leaving Vicks- 
burg high and dry, to awake one morning and dis- 
cover that the great river had forsaken the bluffs 
which it had so long washed, and now in a new 
channel, was bearing the enemy triumphantly 
southward. But early in March a sudden rise in 
the river broke the dam at the upper end, and 
drove the men out of the ditch. 

All these failures gave no little satisfaction to 
the Confederates, and to the enemies of Grant in 
the North. During these months of baffled 
efforts a great cry had arisen against Grant and 
there were loud and insistent demands for his 
removal. It was at this time that the rumors of 
his intemperate use of liquor were most widely 
current. It was to satisfy the mind of Lincoln 
and Stanton as to the manners and methods of 
Grant, that Charles A. Dana was sent to join the 
army as a special commissioner, to send daily 
reports on the progress of the campaign and the 
men who were entrusted with it. Fortunately, 
Halleck and Lincoln and Stanton all stood loyally 
by Grant, and, sooner than they thought, he was 
to give splendid vindication to their confidence. 

On the evening of the fourteenth of April there 
was a conference of officers at Grant’s head- 
quarters. All the officers of high rank save 
Sherman and McClernand were present, and the 
Commander of the Navy, Porter. To these men 
Grant told his plan to run gunboats and transports 
past the batteries and march the army along the 
roads that had been left bare by the receding 


148 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


backwash of the river to a point where they could 
be ferried over to the east bank, and attack 
Grand Gulf, the left flank of the defenses of Vicks- 
burg. All of Grant’s lieutenants voiced their dis- 
sent and declared the undertaking to be full of 
hazard, and Sherman sent a long, written remon- 
strance, urging a return to Memphis and an 
overland campaign from the north. After all 
opinions had been freely stated, Grant said in his 
quiet way, “I am sorry to differ with you all, but 
my mind is made up; the army will move tomor- 
row at ten o’clock.” Seldom in the history of our 
nation has a more momentous decision been 
made. Grant had no authority over Porter, at 
the head of the river navy; but one of the fairest 
chapters in the long struggle to save the Republic 
from disunion is the story of the loyal and en- 
thusiastic support given by Porter and the men 
under his command to Grant and his soldiers. 
Porter was a son of the famous captain who com- 
manded the Essex when, after a terrible battle, 
she struck to the Cherub and the Phoebe in the 
harbor of Valparaiso in the War of 1812. In the 
struggle for the Mississippi he showed himself 
a worthy son of a famous sire. 

At ten o’clock on the night of the sixteenth of 
April, Grant stood on the deck of his head- 
quarters’ boat and watched with deep anxiety the 
dark hulks of the gunboats and the transports 
drift slowly down with the current until they 
were lost to view. The ships displayed no lights 
save signal lamps in the stern. But a sudden flash 
from the batteries and the scream of the shell 
told Grant and his staff that the ships had been 
detected. In a moment every battery opened 
fire, and the whole range of bluffs was illuminated 
with the fire of the guns. To aid them in getting 
the range, houses were set on fire on the shore 


VICKSBURG 149 


across from the city. But the aim of the Con- 
federate gunners was wild, and each of Porter’s 
gunboats as it ran in front of the city saluted it 
with shell after shell, as if giving Vicksburg a 
taste of what was to come. The boilers of the 
vessels were protected with bales of cotton and 
hay, and fearless men were stationed in the holds 
to stop with cotton any shotholes that might be 
made in the hulks. Only one of the transports 
was lost in running the batteries whose fire had 
been so dreaded, the menace of which had kept 
the army digging for months in noisome swamps 
and bayous in a vain endeavor to reach the city. 
The lost transport was the Henry Clay, her in- 
trepid pilot standing by her until she grounded, 
and then escaping by floating down the river on 
a plank. 

On the thirtieth of April the advance corps of 
Grant’s army was safely over the river and the 
last chapter in the siege of Vicksburg had com- 
menced. The thunder of Porter’s guns as his 
ships ran by the batteries sounded the doom of 
the defiant fortress. The first great objective 
towards the gaining of which all the dreary, dis- 
heartening labor of the winter months had been 
expended, had now been secured. As Grant saw 
the last regiments of McClernand’s corps clamber 
up the bluffs at Bruinsburg, he breathed a sigh of 
relief. His own words tell best of what had been 
accomplished and of the difficulties yet to be en- 
countered: “When this was effected, I felt a 
degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since. 
Vicksburg was not yet taken, it is true, nor were 
its defenders demoralized by any of our previous 
moves. I was now in the enemy’s country, with a 
vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg be- 
tween me and my base of supplies. But I was on 
dry ground on the same side of the river with the 


150 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


enemy. All the campaigns, labors, hardships and 
exposures from the month of December previous 
to this time that had been made and endured, 
were for the accomplishment of this one object.” 
On dry ground on the same side of the river 
with the enemy! There you have Grant in all 
his simplicity and rugged determination. All he 
had asked for was standing room so that he might 
launch the blow of his mailed fist. The first day 
of May saw him standing on high ground east 
of the Mississippi. Vicksburg was now to feel 
the power of his blow. 

The mutual support of the generals command- 
ing the different divisions of an army is always 
an important factor in the success of any military 
undertaking. Because of the peculiar conditions 
at Vicksburg, it may be said that in this cam- 
paign, more than in any other campaign of the 
Civil War, the enthusiastic and harmonious eli- 
forts of the officers commanding the different 
parts of the army contributed to the final victory. 
Who were these men upon whom Grant had to 
rely? First and foremost was the versatile and 
fiery Sherman. William Tecumseh Sherman 
came of a. prominent Ohio family, his brother 
John being. before the war, and for long after, a 
man of the greatest influence in the government 
circles at Washington. Sherman commanded a 
brigade in the debacle of Bull Run, and was then 
appointed to an important command in Ken- 
tucky. He told Cameron, then Secretary of War, 
that he would need two hundred thousand men for 
the work confronting him. This got out in the 
newspapers and it was very generally reported 
that Sherman was insane. This canard operated 
against his securing an important position until 
Shiloh gave him his opportunity and started him 
on a career of usefulness and success which was 


VICKSBURG 151 


to come to a consummation when he led his army 
from Atlanta to the sea. 

At the head of the 17th Army Corps was an- 
other young officer, also a son of Ohio, James 
B. McPherson. McPherson, then thirty-two years 
of age, was a military engineer and had served 
with Grant at Shiloh. When Grant went east, 
McPherson succeeded Sherman in command of 
the Army of Tennessee and took a distinguished 
part in Sherman’s campaign through Georgia, 
until he fell mortally wounded at the battle of 
Peach Tree Creek in 1864. By those who served with 
him he was considered one of the first four or five 
officers in either army. Grant gives him this 
high encomium: “In his death, the army lost one 
of its ablest, purest and best generals.” McPher- 
son stood first in the class of 1853 at West Point; 
Schofield seventh; Sheridan thirty-fourth, and 
Flood forty-fourth out of a membership of fifty- 
two. Grant, Sherman and McPherson were all 
Ohio born and spent their early days within a 
hundred miles of one another. 

Grant’s third lieutenant, the commander of 
the 13th Army Corps, was an Illinois politician, 
John A. McClernand. He was in Congress when 
the war broke out, but resigned to serve his 
country in the field. A Democrat in politics, he 
was prompt to let it be known how he stood in 
the nation’s hour of need. In a democracy no 
wise president, in such a storm as overtook this 
nation in the ’Sixties, could ignore political con- 
siderations. The prominent part taken by Mc- 
Clernand, and assigned to him by Lincoln, must 
be considered in that light. McClernand com- 
manded a division at Donelson and Shiloh, and 
before Grant took command in the field over the 
armies operating against Vicksburg, had been 
given an independent commission to reduce that 


152 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


stronghold. No one could question his personal 
gallantry or his patriotism. But he seems to have 
been one of those personalities who touch others 
unpleasantly. Sherman, Porter, McPherson all 
disliked him, and Grant maintains that the men 
in both the army and the navy in the west dis- 
trusted him. It was this fact, he says, that led 
him to take personal command over the expedi- 
tion against Vicksburg. McClernand felt that he 
had been unjustly removed from the leadership 
of the expedition, and manifested his grudge in 
a manner that to Grant must have been most 
irritating. When Grant and his officers were 
hurrying over the river, taking with them no 
baggage or camp outfit, McClernand was prepar- 
ing to transport his bride, her servants and all 
their impedimenta. He was profane, disrespectful 
to Grant in the extreme, and the wonder is that 
Grant tolerated him so long. After the second 
assault on the works of Vicksburg, he was indis- 
creet enough to have published in the press a 
congratulatory address to the men of his corps, 
reflecting on the services of the other parts of 
the army. This brought down on him the wrath 
of Sherman and McPherson, and Grant, when his 
attention was called to the offense, relieved him 
at once, appointing to the command of the 13th 
Corps the very able and professional soldier, 
Edward Ord. Ord afterwards commanded the 
Army of the James and was “in at the death” at 
Appomattox Court House. 

Among other officers who aided Grant in his 
difficult undertaking, mention should be made 
of General Logan, perhaps the ablest non-pro- 
fessional officer developed during the war. He 
commanded the 15th Army Corps in Sherman’s 
Georgia campaign, and was so highly thought of 
by Grant that he was sent west to relieve Thomas 


VICKSBURG 153 


when that noble soldier’s cautious policy at Nash- 
ville had exhausted the patience of the govern- 
ment. Happily the word came of Thomas’ splen- 
did victory when Logan had got as far as Louis- 
ville. 

Nor must we forget Grant’s assistant adjutant- 
general, the Galena lawyer, John A. Rawlins. 
Grant describes him as “an able man, possessed 
of great firmness, and could say ‘no’ so emphati- 
cally to a request which he thought should not 
be granted, that the person he was addressing 
would understand at once that there was no use 
of pressing the matter. General Rawlins was a 
very useful officer in other ways than this.” One 
of those other ways was his personal influence 
upon Grant. A touching example of his devotion 
to his chief is shown by the letter which he 
addressed to Grant during the Vicksburg cam- 
paign, telling him how he had seen liquor about 
the headquarters, and how some of the officers 
associated with him would do him only harm, 
solemnly reminding him of the promise made 
that he would drink no more during the war, and 
pleading with him for his own sake and for the 
sake of the righteous cause, to practise total 
abstinence. The records of military history will 
be searched in vain for such an example of per- 
sonal loyalty and high devotion to the welfare of 
the state. 

Having spoken thus briefly of some of the men 
who were associated with Grant, let us look now 
for a moment at the character of the officers who 
led the opposing armies. The Commander-in- 
Chief in the West on the Confederate side was 
Joseph E. Johnston. He was in command of one 
of the Confederate armies at Bull Run and Op- 
posed McClellan in the peninsula until he was 
wounded at Seven Pines. He was highly es- 


154 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


teemed by the officers of the old army and all 
the Union generals opposed to him during the 
Civil War spoke well of him. He commanded 
the forces opposing Sherman in his advance into 
Georgia, until relieved by the impetuous Hood. 
He remained unemployed until, in the last days 
of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis called on him 
to take command of the forces gathered in North 
Carolina to stay the progress of Sherman. Un- 
fortunately Johnston did not enjoy the confidence 
of Davis. In the Vicksburg campaign his orders 
to Pemberton were practically ignored. Had 
they been observed, it is improbable that the 
Confederate Army would have been shut up there 
with no possibility of escape. 

In immediate command at Vicksburg was 
Lieutenant-General John Pemberton. Pemberton 
was a Pennsylvanian who had graduated at West 
Point in 1837. In the old army, he had come 
under the spell of Jefferson Davis and when the 
South seceded, threw in his fortunes with the Con- 
federacy. Davis rapidly advanced him to a 
lieutenant-generalship and entrusted him with 
the defense of the Mississippi. He was wholly 
unworthy of the task and showed himself com- 
pletely unable to understand the kind of warfare 
that Grant had launched against him the moment 
he got his army across the Mississippi. That the 
fortress held out so long was due to the gallantry 
of the soldiers, and in no sense to the intelligence 
of Pemberton. It may be that in hanging on to 
the fortress when Johnston had ordered him to 
move out, Pemberton was influenced by the con- 
sideration that he, being a Pennsylvanian, might 
be under suspicion of treachery. Pemberton now 
sleeps in one of the cemeteries overlooking the 
Schuylkill River, a strange companion for Meade 
and that noble group of Philadelphians and Penn- 


VICKSBURG 155 


sylvanians who played so notable a part in the 
great struggle which maintained the integrity of 
the Union. 

The last stage of the campaign for Vicksburg com- 
menced on the first day of May when Grant drove the 
Confederates out of Fort Gibson, and ended on the 
fourth of July when the garrison marched out of their 
works and stacked arms. That campaign of two 
months and four days represents Grant at his best. His 
blows were struck with a Napoleonic swiftness, and 
although circumstances altered the original plan of the 
campaign, he showed a wonderful ability to meet every 
condition and profit by every eventuality. His infor- 
mation as to the disposition of his adversary’s forces 
seems always to have been correct; he foresaw un- 
erringly the moves that his foe would make, and in 
whichever direction he moved, always met him with a 
superior force. At the same time, by a series of feints, 
he mystified his enemy and kept him in the dark as to 
his own purpose. When Grant occupied Grand Gulf, 
thirty miles below Vicksburg, it had been his plan to 
use it as a base of supplies, sending a part of his army 
down to the river to assist Banks in the reduction of 
the other Confederate fortress, Port Hudson. But on 
the third of May he received word from Banks that his 
army could not reach Port Hudson before the tenth 
of May. In the meantime, Grant knew that Johnston 
would be gathering forces for the relief of Vicksburg 
and that the defenses of the city would be strengthened. 
He could not afford to lose those seven days of time 
and opportunity. Could he afford to take the risk of 
cutting loose from his base, feeding his army on the 
country and driving the Confederate troops back into 
Vicksburg? All of his officers thought that he could 
not. Sherman told him that he was putting himself 
in a position to get him into which the enemy would 
manoeuvre a year. He would be in the enemy’s coun- 
try with a vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg 


156 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


between him and his chief base of supplies. Grant 
knew that Halleck and Lincoln would not approve 
the move, but he knew also that before they could 
order him back the venture would have won him Vicks- 
burg, or lost him his own army and his own career. 
The silent soldier took counsel with himself alone. 
There on the banks of the Mississippi at Grand Gulf, 
a grateful nation may now think of him treading 
alone the winepress of his anxiety and his solicitude 
for the nation, and at length making the decision 
which was to be so fateful for the country and for 
the world. 

During the day and the night of the sixth of May 
Sherman’s corps crossed the river at Grand Gulf, and 
the whole army was now east of the Mississippi. In 
the early morning of the seventh the bugles rang out 
through the scrub oaks and stunted pines, and the 
men of McPherson’s corps took up the march which 
was to end with victory. On the twelfth McPherson 
struck the Confederates under Gregg at Raymond, and 
sent them flying from the field. On the fourteenth 
Sherman and McPherson drove Johnston, who had 
arrived on the evening of the thirteenth, out of Jack- 
son, and the Stars and Stripes was hoisted on the dome 
of the fine old State House. Leaving Sherman to 
destroy stores and railroads in and about Jackson, 
Grant, without a day’s delay, turned west to meet the 
forces under Pemberton, now in his rear, and thinking 
they had cut his line of communications, little dream- 
ing that Grant had none to cut. Before he could get 
out of the road back into Vicksburg, or unite his 
forces with the fleeing Johnston, Grant was upon him 
at Champion Hill, a thicket hilltop a few miles west of 
Edwards Station, and about twenty miles from Vicks- 
burg. Pemberton was swept from the field, and if 
McClernand had acted with greater vigor and judg- 
ment, the entire Confederate Army would have been 
annihilated. This was on the sixteenth of May. On 


VICKSBURG 157 


the seventeenth Pemberton withdrew his beaten army 
into the works of Vicksburg. The defenses at Haynes’ 
Bluff were abandoned, and on the afternoon of the 
nineteenth Grant and Sherman sat on their horses, 
looking down on the very bluffs where Sherman had 
met with the disastrous repulse the previous December. 
Both generals now realized that Vicksburg must fall, 
and the trials and labors and disappointments of the 
past weary months were forgotten. Sherman said 
to Grant that until then he had doubted the success of 
the movement, but now he knew that he had taken 
part in one of the greatest campaigns of history. 
Vicksburg was now straitly shut up, but it was still to 
be taken. Johnston sent word to Pemberton to try to 
cut his way out and save the garrison, for the city was 
doomed. Pemberton did not obey. On the nineteenth 
Grant, counting on the demoralization of the beaten 
garrison, ordered an assault. It was not successful, the 
Confederates fighting behind their defenses with the 
greatest spirit and determination. On the twenty- 
second another assault was ordered to be made by all 
three corps. The national flag waved for a little mo- 
ment on the parapets, but the works could not be car- 
tied. Grant and Sherman were standing together back 
of the Union lines discussing the failure of the assault 
when a note was handed them from McClernand, stat- 
ing that “the flag of the Union waved over the strong- 
hold of Vicksburg” and asking Grant to order Sher- 
man and McPherson to renew their attacks. Grant 
said to Sherman, “I don’t believe a word of it!” But 
Sherman thought the intelligence must be credited, and 
offered to renew the assault. At three in the afternoon 
a second assault was made, proving more bloody and 
costly than the first. McClernand had taken only a 
few outlying lunettes and most of the men who took 
them were either killed or captured by the Confed- 
erates. His exaggerated report of his success, induc- 


158 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


ing Grant to make the final assault, caused great feel- 
ing against him on the part of the other generals. 

The Federal casualties were over three thousand. 
One of the horrors of the repulse was that Grant did 
not follow the usual custom and ask for an armistice 
to remove the dead and wounded. The dead lay fes- 
tering in the scorching sun until the stench became un- 
bearable, and the wounded lay writhing and moaning 
for three days without food or water or the ministries 
of their fellowmen. Grant regretted the assault when 
the facts were known; but regrets do not ease the 
agony of the wounded, nor call back to life the un- 
known dead. Of Second Cold Harbor, Grant said that 
it was the one battle he ever regretted having fought, 
and then adds, “I may say the same of the assault of 
May 22, 1863, at Vicksburg.” 

Efforts to take the town by storm having failed, 
Grant now settled down to a siege. His army lay on 
the high healthy plateaus with plenty of good water, 
and reinforcements were being hurried to him by Hal- 
leck. Vicksburg was admirably situated for purposes 
of defense. Sherman said that after visiting Sebas- 
topol, he regarded Vicksburg as the more difficult of 
the two. Some distance out from the town, the plateau 
on which the city stands has been cut by wind and 
water into a labyrinth of deep ravines and gullies. In 
the ravines were noisome swamps, and the sides and 
summits of the steep hills were covered with trees. 
The Confederate positions were on the tops of these 
ridges where they could command the gullies below, 
and by felling trees could erect in front of their works 
an almost impassable barrier. But the garrison had 
been depleted by the fighting in the country between 
Jackson and Vicksburg, and their spirits were de- 
pressed by the apparent hopelessness of their task. On 
the twenty-eighth of June Pemberton received a letter 
signed ‘Many Soldiers.” The letter contained senti- 
ments of this nature: ‘Everybody admits that we have 


VICKSBURG 159 


covered ourselves with glory, but alas! alas! General, 
a crisis has arrived in the midst of our siege. Our ra- 
tions have been cut down to one biscuit and a small 
bit of bacon per day. If you can’t feed us, you had 
better surrender us, horrible as the idea is, than suffer 
this noble army to disgrace themselves and the country 
by desertion. I tell you plainly, men are not going 
to lie here and perish, if they do love their country 
dearly. The army is now ripe for mutiny.” 
Meanwhile the Union lines were being pushed 
nearer and nearer to the Confederate works, and the 
shells fired by the naval guns in the river sounded by 
day and by night the requiem of the Confederacy. The 
Queen City of the Bluffs must shortly be humbled in 
the dust. Grant had made all his preparations for a 
grand assault on the sixth of July. But at ten o’clock 
on the morning of the third, white flags were seen 
waving on the Confederate works and soon two offi- 
cers walked towards the national lines bearing a com- 
munication from Pemberton to Grant, asking for an 
armistice with a view to arranging for the capitulation 
of Vicksburg. The note suggested that three commis- 
sioners on each side arrange the terms of surrender. 
Pemberton said he could maintain himself for an in- 
definite period, but made the proposition in order to 
save the “further useless effusion of blood.” That was 
a phrase which Grant was to employ when he opened 
negotiations with Lee at Appomattox Court House. 
Grant refused to meet these officers, but agreed to meet 
with Pemberton himself, at the same time sending a 
note to that General and telling him that the best 
way to stop the “further useless effusion of blood’”’ was 
by the unconditional surrender of the city and the gar- 
rison. They met that afternoon at three o’clock be- 
neath a stunted oak in front of McPherson’s corps. 
With Grant were Ord, McPherson, Logan, A. iY 
Smith, Charles A. Dana and members of his staff. 
Pemberton was accompanied by General Bowen. 


160 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


On a September day, sixteen years before, when the 
American army was taking the defenses of Mexico 
City, Lieutenant U. S. Grant had hoisted a howitzer to 
the tower of a church and opened fire on a position 
held by the Mexicans. The work of the gun was so 
telling that General Worth sent a staff officer to com- 
pliment Grant. The staff officer was Lieutenant Pem- 
berton. Now, after the lapse of years, they met under 
strangely different circumstances. Grant greeted him 
in a friendly fashion, and when, after a few minutes 
reminiscing, in reply to Pemberton’s inquiry as to 
terms, Grant said they would be what he had intimated 
in his note—unconditional surrender—Pemberton, 
with evident irritation, replied that the conference 
might as well end right there, and turned abruptly as 
if to leave. Grant acquiesced with a quiet “Very well,” 
and the conference would have terminated had it not 
been for the earnest intervention of General Bowen, 
who requested a conference with Smith. After a little, 
Bowen suggested that the garrison be permitted to 
march out with the honors of war, carrying their small 
arms and field artillery. This was rejected by Grant, 
and the two generals parted, Grant promising, how- 
ever, to send his terms by ten o’clock that night. He 
immediately summoned all his corps and division com- 
manfiders and had with them what he called “the near- 
est approach to a council of war I ever held.” He 
listened to their suggestions and then, in spite of the 
unanimous judgment of those present, sent to Pem- 
berton a letter offering to accept the surrender of the 
garrison with the understanding that all the defenders 
be paroled and permitted to march out of the Union 
lines, taking with them their clothing, necessary ra- 
tions, the field, staff and cavalry officers, their side arms 
and one horse each. The terms were generous, some 
thought too generous. But the transport of such a 
large body of troops to the North, only to be ex- 
changed and sent back to the South to fight again in 


VICKSBURG 161 


the Confederate ranks, Grant considered a needless 1a- 
bor and expense. Most of the men in Pemberton’s 
army lived in the Southwest, and it was the hope of 
Grant, to a large extent realized, that these men, once 
paroled near their homes, would be glad to go home 
and stay out of the Confederate Army. 

When Pemberton opened negotiations for the sur- 
render of the fortress on the third of July, his purpose 
probably was to avoid the surrender or capture of the 
place on the national holiday, although he himself 
makes the absurd contention that the fourth was se- 
lected as the day for the surrender because he thought 
on that day he could get better terms. ‘Well aware 
of the vanity of our foe, I knew that they would 
attach vast importance to the entrance on the fourth 
of July into the stronghold of the great river, and that, 
to gratify their national vanity, they would yield then 
what could not be extorted from them at any other 
time.” But, however it may have happened, or what- 
ever the motives in the mind of Pemberton in asking 
for terms on the third, it was a fitting climax to the 
long and costly struggle for Vicksburg that the sur- 
render should have been made on the anniversary of 
the nation’s birth. At ten o’clock on the morning of 
the fourth the heroic defenders came out of their 
works and, forming a long line, stacked the arms they 
had borne with such courage and fortitude, and then 
marched back into their own positions. The men were 
weary—they looked as if glad to have it over with, but 
the faces of some of the officers were wet with tears. 
Not a cheer rose from the ranks of Grant’s seasoned 
veterans as they witnessed the final act in what they all 
realized was a great drama in American history. 

Sharp orders now rang out along the front of Lo- 
gan’s division which had approached nearest to the 
Confederate works, and to which was to fall the honor 
of first entering the vanquished stronghold. With 
drums beating and colors flying, these men in blue 


162 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


marched through the now unresisting works and into 
the heart of the fallen city. Ona high hill, overlooking 
the river and the surrounding country, stood, and still 
stands, the noble old Courthouse, its massive Cor- 
inthian columns and lofty cupola visible from every 
part of the city. One of Logan’s men ran up the stairs 
and climbed the ladder leading to the cupola. Slowly 
the banner of the Confederacy that had so long 
flaunted its defiance came fluttering down like a 
wounded bird, and in its place waved in triumph the 
Stars and Stripes. As soon as the flag was observed 
by the men on the decks of the ships lying in the river, 
it was greeted by salvos of artillery and the long- 
drawn-out roar of the river sirens. At that same hour, 
on that same eventful Saturday, the roads through 
the passes of Monterey Gap and Fairfield, leading to 
Hagerstown and the Potomac, were blocked with the 
soldiers and horses and wagons of Lee’s army retreat- 
ing after the bloody repulse of Gettysburg. The war 
was to go on for almost two more years, but for the 
South it was the energy of despair. Gettysburg and 
Vicksburg were fields of destiny. On the fourth of 
July, 1776, the nation was born. On the fourth of 
July, 1863, the nation was born again. 

Thirty-one thousand six hundred soldiers were sur- 
rendered at Vicksburg, the largest body of troops ever 
taken prisoner in the history of modern war, up to 
the Franco-Prussian War. Five days after Vicks- 
burg fell, Port Hudson surrendered, and the Missis- 
sippi was free of hostile forces from where it washes 
the bluffs of Minnesota and Wisconsin to where it 
pours its yellow tide into the Gulf of Mexico. The 
chain which held slavery together had been broken, 
never again to be mended. No wonder Sherman 
wrote, “I now see the first gleam of daylight in the 
war.” 

The August sun was burning fiercely one day when 
I took refuge in the cool solitudes of the Courthouse. 


VICKSBURG 163 


It had been reared by the labor of slaves, and stands 
a monument to the capacity and possibilities of the 
negro, as well as to the now forever-vanished reign of 
the slave-holder and his oligarchy. The vast size of 
the building, its massiveness, its grace and beauty, all 
reflect the lordliness and prodigality of slavery. The 
sheriff’s deputy told me I could get to the cupola and 
have a fine view of the city and the river if I was 
willing to climb a ladder. The ladder did not alarm 
me, and I went up the old stairway to the second story, 
pausing to have a look at the courtroom, very dirty, 
dark, well spittooned, but with all the evidences of 
one-time splendor and dignity. Then, on to the third 
story, and the fourth, and then up a narrow enclosed 
stairway until I found myself in a dim wilderness of 
rafters, iron girders and rods. Groping about, and 
fearful lest I should make a misstep and land in one 
of the undiscovered chambers beneath me, I soon laid 
hold of the ladder and climbed up it to the first land- 
ing, where the great bell, which had rung out tidings 
of joy and sorrow for Vicksburg and all the South- 
land, still hangs, and then on to the very pinnacle of 
this temple of justice, where I pushed open an obstinate 
and protesting dvor, and stepped out upon the railed 
platform and into the warm sunlight. In front of me, 
flowing past islands of green, was the Mississippi, with 
here and there the towering stacks or the ascending 
smoke of a river steamer. In the distance I could hear 
the hum of the city far below, and now and then the 
long-drawn and not unmusical roar of the steamer 
whistles, like an echo coming back from the activities 
of a vanished age. To my left lay the city with its 
churches, banks, warehouses and spires. Back of me, 
interspersed with the green of the trees, I could dis- 
cern the little white stones in the National Cemetery 
which marked the graves of twenty-six thousand 
Union soldiers, most of them “unknown.” Who they 
were none knows; what they were all know. And back 


164 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


of the city, in one long arc stretching from the Yazoo 
to the Mississippi, the great white monuments told 
me where the battles had been fought and the trenches 
had approached each other. Conspicuous among the 
monuments is the massive temple erected to the sol- 
diers of Illinois who played such an important part 
in the campaign. The dome has been left open at the 
top, and the visitor, after reading the inscriptions and 
devices, may turn his glance upward and see the blue 
heavens, and the white clouds floating by. Further to 
the right I could make out the splendid mounted figure 
in front of the Iowa monument, and still more to the 
right the great eagle spreading his wings on the top of 
the Wisconsin column. Pennsylvania, too, is remem- 
bered on that field of glory, for while she was playing 
the chief part in the great drama that closed on the 
same day on the pleasant fields of Gettysburg, a few 
of her soldiers lay in the trenches before Vicksburg. 
Nor has the part of the navy been forgotten, and the 
heroic Porter stands with binoculars in hand at the 
base of the navy memorial, looking off towards the 
river he helped to free. 

Not elsewhere on this continent, I am thinking, will 
you behold a panorama which reveals to you so wide 
an expanse of our nation’s history. As I looked again 
on the mighty river winding away to the Gulf, the 
peaceful city, the white memorials to courage and de- 
termination gleaming on every high hill and under 
every green tree, methought I beheld the new nation, 
redeemed at so great a price from shame and dishonor, 
and in the pain and bloody toil of battle forever con- 
secrated to justice and righteousness. 


XII 
CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA 


When we left New York on an April afternoon 
the wind was cold and the snow was falling. In 
the morning we awoke in the midst of the Blue 
Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The western 
mountains are more rugged, but the Blue Ridge 
and the Allegheny Mountains are more pleasing 
to the eye and more typical of American life. As 
we came down from the summit of the mountains 
the sombre colors gradually gave way to the 
brighter hues of spring. Where the farmers had 
done their plowing, the fields lay a vast cloth 
of soft red or brown. Flanking the plowed fields 
were long stretches of brilliant green where the 
winter wheat, which had slept beneath the snow, 
was waking into newness of life. Along every 
fence and hedge and ravine there waved the crim- 
son blossoms of the Judas tree. Higher up along 
the hillsides flocks of sheep played in the joy of 
spring. Then came the forest line of battle— 
mostly green, the delicate green of new leaves— 
with here and there a dash of snow—white where 
the dogwood grew, or the red of the wild plum; 
and far in the distance, on the very summit of 
the hills, a lonesome pine, a noble cedar of Leba- 
non, keeping its solitary watch. But the dogwood was 
the chief glory of the landscape: 


In Tennessee, the dogwood tree . 
Blossoms tonight; towards the sea 
The Cumberland makes melody 

In Tennessee. 


165 


166 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Through Lynchburg, near which were staged 
the last scenes of the Confederacy, not far from 
Lexington and the Natural Bridge, we journeyed 
to Bristol and thence to Knoxville. Now we 
were on the path of the Scotch-Irish emigrants 
who had come from Virginia, Pennsylvania and 
North Carolina to conquer the western wilds 
with rifle, Latin grammar, and psalm book. At 
Greenville we saw the house where John Morgan, 
the famous cavalry chief and raider, was surprised 
and shot. On the outskirts of the town we could 
see the grave and monument to the seventeenth 
President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, 
the stormy petrel of American politics. It was at 
Greenville he worked at the tailors’ bench and 
there he married Eliza McCardle, who taught him 
reading and arithmetic. His political career be- 
gan when, as a leader of working men, he was 
elected an alderman. After that he was mayor, 
state legislator, Congressman, Governor and U. S. 
Senator; then Provisional Governor of Tennessee, 
and finally Vice-President of the United States, 
when the assassin’s bullet made him Lincoln’s 
successor. A rough, strong, honest, patriotic 
man, more often in the right than in the wrong, 
his name is now beginning to recover from the 
odium once heaped upon it. 

Ten days before Vicksburg fell, Rosecrans 
continued the movement which had been sus- 
pended after Stone River and took the field 
against Bragg. As soon as Vicksburg fell 
Brage’s army was strengthened by the return 
of troops which had been sent into Mississippi to 
help raise the siege of Vicksburg. By a series of 
able movements Rosecrans forced Bragg out of 
middle Tennessee, across the Tennessee River 
and into Chattanooga. On the eighth of Septem- 
ber Bragg evacuated Chattanooga and retired into 


CHICKAMAUGA 167 


Georgia, apparently in full retreat to the south- 
west. The Army of the Cumberland followed in 
pursuit, but owing to the broken and mountainous 
nature of the country, the different corps of the 
army were widely separated. The corps of 
Thomas was far to the north and left, and that 
under McCook far to the south, when word was 
brought by a scout of Sheridan that Bragg’s re- 
treat was only a blind, that he expected to be 
reinforced by Longstreet from the army under 
Lee, and that he was even then moving to inter- 
pose between the Union Army and Chattanooga. 
The scout who brought these startling tidings 
was a Union man living in the neighborhood. For 
his wages he asked that Sheridan would purchase 
what livestock he possessed so that he might 
migrate to the West. While getting information 
within the Confederate lines he was arrested and 
placed under guard. He managed to make his 
escape by crawling through the picket lines on 
his belly and imitating the grunts of the wild 
hogs with which the country abounded. The 
Chickamauga campaign, perhaps better than any 
other, illustrates the great importance of correct 
information as to the movements and purposes 
of the opposing army. This was on the thir- 
teenth, and it was only by tremendous exertions 
on the part of McCook’s corps that the army was 
reunited before Bragg could strike. It was this 
movement of Bragg which brought about the 
battle of Chickamauga on the nineteenth and 
twentieth of September, 1863. 

Chickamauga is an Indian name which means 
River of Death, and on those September days the 
name was no misnomer. Perhaps no field of the 
war is so much the child of solitude as the hills 
and fields and forests which comprise the arena 
of this greatest battle of the West. It was April 


168 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


when I visited the field and the mountain air was 
cool and bracing. In the open fields the flocks of 
sheep were grazing, birds sang in the forest, and 
the whole scene was peaceful, like an unexplored 
wilderness. But here and there we saw blocks of 
white stone appearing through the leaves, and 
these told all too plainly that there once had been 
a day when Chickamauga heard other music than 
that of the birds and had seen other clouds than 
those white, fleecy ones which drifted aimlessly 
along, above the green of the trees, beneath the 
blue of the sky. 

Well down towards the center of the field 
stands a little log cabin called the Brotherton 
House. It was here that the men under Long- 
street broke through the Union lines and all but 
destroyed Rosecrans’ army. The battle had been 
opened on the morning of the nineteenth by 
Polk, the bishop-general, attacking the Union left 
under Thomas. The day ended without decisive 
advantage to either side. During the night Long- 
street, who had been detached from the army 
under Lee, came up in person and took a position 
on the Confederate left. The battle was renewed 
in the morning, but had yet reached no critical 
stage, when, by a misinterpreted order, a division 
of troops was withdrawn from the Union right 
and center. Through this gap near the Brother- 
ton House Longstreet poured his troops in a 
furious charge, led by the fiery Hood, which cut 
the Union army in two and swept the right 
under McCook and the center under Crittenden 
completely off the field. 

Charles A. Dana was with the staff of Rose- 
crans at that time as the personal representative 
of Secretary of War Stanton. On the evening of 
the nineteenth, Rosecrans conferred with his 
generals at headquarters in the Widow Glen’s 


CHICKAMAUGA 169 


house. Thomas was weary with the day’s exer- 
tions and went to sleep repeatedly. When Rose- 
crans asked his advice he would straighten up 
and answer, “I would strengthen the left,’ and 
then fall asleep. He seemed to divine the danger 
of the morrow. When asked if he could cover 
the rear in case of a retreat, he replied, “This 
army can’t retreat!” Coffee was at length 
brought in and the versatile McCook sang the 
“Hebrew Maiden.” In many respects the McCook 
family is the most remarkable participating in the 
war. Of this Scotch-Irish Presbyterian family 
coming from New Lisbon, Ohio, the father and 
eight brothers were officers in the Union army, 
and of these the father and three brothers were 
killed. 

About noon on the twentieth, Dana, who was 
with Rosecrans on the right, dismounted from his 
horse and stretched out on the grass to take a 
nap. He was shortly awakened by a crash of 
musketry. Sitting up on the grass the first thing 
he saw was Rosecrans, a devout Catholic, 
crossing himself. ‘Hello!’ Dana said to himself, 
“if the general is crossing himself, we are in a 
desperate situation.” And such it soon proved to 
be. After a vain effort to stem the panic or get 
into communication with Thomas on the left, 
Rosecrans rode back into Chattanooga where he 
was joined by McCook and Crittenden. It 
seemed a complete wreck of the Union army and 
Dana telegraphed to Stanton; “My report today 
is of deplorable importance. Chickamauga is as 
fatal a name in our history as Bull Run.” But 
by the evening it was known that things were 
not quite so bad as he had represented them. 

As soon as the Union right and center had been 
driven off the field the victorious Confederates 
turned to attack Thomas on the left. Thomas was 


170 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


strongly posted on a ridge of hills called the 
Horseshoe Curve. Against this position the Con- 
federates under Longstreet, veterans of the Peach 
Orchard and the Wheat Field at Gettysburg, 
flung themselves in furious and repeated charges. 
Perhaps never again during the war did the 
Confederate soldier fight with the same dash and 
spirit with which he charged the lines held by 
Thomas. After Chickamauga he still fought with 
desperation, but it was with the spirit of a man _ 
who was determined to die with harness on his 
back rather than that of a man who expected 
victory. The heroic stand of Thomas after his 
commanding officer and two-thirds of the army 
had left the field is one of the great incidents of 
the Civil War, and Thomas well deserved the 
title which he won that day, the Rock of 
Chickamauga. But there were other officers 
who shared in the honor of that engagement. 
First among these was Gordon Granger, who was 
stationed with the reserves near Rossville, far in 
the rear. As the fog lifted on that Sabbath morn- 
ing he and his officers heard only the peaceful 
tones of the church bells in Chattanooga rolling 
over the ridges. Soon these peaceful notes were 
lost in the thunder of the cannon at the front. 
Granger had been ordered to hold his present 
position at all hazards. But as the sound of the 
guns kept increasing in volume, and the clouds 
of smoke and dust rose on the horizon, he became 
impatient and exclaimed to his chief of staff, 
“Why the hell does Rosecrans keep me here? 
There is the battle !”—-pointing in the direction of 
Thomas. At eleven o’clock he climbed into a hay- 
rick and stood listening to the sounds of the 
conflict. Finally, with an oath, he thrust his 
glass into its case and jumping down from the 
hay-rick said, “I am going to Thomas, orders or 


CHICKAMAUGA 171 


no orders.” Two hours later, at one o'clock, 
Granger shook hands with the anxious Thomas 
and flung his reserves into the battle. The part 
that Granger played in saving the day is illus- 
trated by the fact that out of 3,700 men of the 
Reserve Corps who were thrown into the battle, 
nearly fifty per cent were killed or disabled. A 
more careful officer might have waited for orders 
until Thomas had been overwhelmed. 

The night brought respite to the weary Thomas, 
and under orders from Rosecrans he withdrew his 
force to the shelter of the Union lines at Chatta- 
nooga. The Confederate army remained in pos- 
session of the hard-fought field, but Bragg did 
not follow up his advantage the next morning, the 
twenty-first, and the badly demoralized Union 
army was permitted to establish itself in the lines 
about Chattanooga. 

Aiter Chickamauga came the siege of Chatta- 
nooga. Jefferson Davis had come out from Rich- 
mond to visit Bragg’s army, and as he stood on 
a crag of Lookout Mountain and looked down 
upon the beleaguered army under Rosecrans, he 
said to Bragg that its destruction was only a 
question of time. 

Meanwhile the Government at Washington was 
frantic over the state of affairs at Chattanooga. 
Grant was lying at Vicksburg recovering from 
injuries received by his horse falling on him at 
New Orleans, when he was directed, on Octo- 
ber 3rd, to report at Cairo. At Cairo he received 
another telegram telling him to proceed to the 
Galt house at Louisville where he would meet an 
officer of the War Department. Just as his train 
was leaving Indianapolis it was stopped by a mes- 
sage that Stanton himself was in the station. On 
the way down to Louisville, Stanton gave Grant 
two orders assigning him to the command of the 


172 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


“Military Division of the Mississippi.” One 
order left the army commanders as they were, but 
the other assigned Thomas to the command of 
the army at Chattanooga. Grant accepted the 
latter, relieving Rosecrans. Having thus arranged 
matters, Grant went to the theatre and Stanton 
to bed. As Grant was returning to the hotel, he 
he was met by messengers from Stanton, urging 
him to come at once, as something terrible had 
happened. Reproaching himself for having at- 
tended the theater when critical things had hap- 
pened in his absence, Grant hurried to Stanton’s 
room, where he found the Secretary pacing up 
and down in his night garments and in the great- 
est distress, for he had just received a telegram 
from Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of 
War, that Rosecrans had given orders to his army 
to retreat. Grant immediately sent a despatch 
relieving General Rosecrans of command and 
directing General Thomas to take command of 
the army until Grant could reach Chattanooga, 
and exhorting Thomas to hold his position at all 
hazards. Thomas sent back the laconic reply, . 
“We will hold the town until we starve.” 

In the battle of Chattanooga, fought Novem- 
ber 23, 24 and 25, 1863, Grant’s plan of 
battle was to have Sherman turn the Confed- 
erate right on Missionary Ridge and Hooker his 
left on Lookout Mountain. The first fighting, 
however, was done by Thomas in the center, who 
carried Orchard Knob on the twenty-third. The 
next day both Sherman and Hooker made their 
attack. Sherman won a position where he could 
threaten Bragg’s right on Missionary Ridge, and 
Hooker, in the so-called Battle above the Clouds 
carried Lookout Mountain. The fame of this 
last-named battle will not stand the light of in- 
vestigation. Commenting on this battle, Grant 





GENERAL HOOKER ON LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN 





CHICKAMAUGA 173 


said to John Russell Young, who accompanied 
him on his trip around the world: “The battle of 
Lookout Mountain is one of the romances of the 
war. There was no such battle and no action 
even worthy to be called a battle on Lookout 
Mountain. It is all poetry.” Bragg seems to 
have had no intention of making a stand at 
Lookout Mountain and very few Union soldiers 
fell in the assault. They won a position at the 
foot of the palisades on the evening of the 
twenty-fourth, and were preparing to storm the 
heights the next morning, when it was discovered 
that the Confederates had withdrawn to Mis- 
sionary Ridge. On the twenty-fifth Sherman 
pressed his attack on the right of Bragg’s army, 
expecting to have assistance from Hooker’s left. 
But Hooker was delayed in getting across Chat- 
tanooga valley by the destruction of bridges, and 
in order to create a diversion in favor of Sher- 
man, Grant ordered Thomas to move against 
Missionary Ridge on the center. This was about 
four o’clock in the afternoon. The troops of 
Thomas had orders to take the first line of rifle 
pits at the base of Missionary Ridge. But when 
they had taken this first line the passion of the 
battle carried them in a wild charge up the slope 
and over the Confederate’s lines at the top of the 
ridge. No orders had been issued for such a 
charge, and Grant, turning to Thomas, said an- 
grily, “Thomas, who ordered those men up the 
ridge?’ Thomas quietly replied, “I don’t know; 
I did not.” Then turning to Granger, Grant said, 
“Did you order them up, Granger?’ “No,” an- 
swered Granger, “they started up without orders. 
When those fellows get started all hell can’t stop 
them.” Grant murmured that somebody would 
suffer if it did not turn out well, and then turned 


174 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


to watch the charge. This battle, like Lookout 
Mountain, was not marked by any desperate fight- 
ing. A heavy fire was opened on the Union 
troops by Bragg’s batteries on the top of the 
ridge, but the guns could not be deglined suf- 
ficiently to do any damage. In a few moments 
Grant and his generals, watching from Orchard 
Knob, saw the men under Sheridan and Wood 
climbing over the top of the ridge, and the army 
of Bragg was in full retreat into Georgia. At 
half-past four Dana thrilled the country by wir- — 
ing to Stanton: “Glory to God! the day is de- 
cisively ours. Missionary Ridge has just been 
carried by the magnificent charge of Thomas’ 
troops, and the rebels routed.” Of this battle 
Grant said: “Mission Ridge, although a great vic- 
tory, would have ended in the destruction of 
Bragg but for our mistake in not knowing the 
ground. If I had known the ground as well be- 
fore the battle as I did after, ] think Bragg would 
have been destroyed. I saw this as soon as the 
battle was over and was greatly disappointed.” 

Chattanooga is the high-water mark of Grant’s 
ability as a commander. He had taken Henry 
and Donelson without a siege, at Shiloh he had 
fought a terrific battle; at Vicksburg he had over- 
come all obstacles by his masterly movements 
and let the “Father of Waters flow unvexed to 
the sea’; here at Chattanooga he had turned con- 
sternation into rejoicing, and by able tactical 
movements had won a great victory with very | 
little fighting. Now the country believed it had 
a soldier who could end the war. Three months 
after Chattanooga, Grant was standing before 
Lincoln at the White House. The President, who 
had just handed him his commission as Lieuten- 
ant-General said to him, “With this high honor, 


CHICKAMAUGA 175 


devolves upon you, also, a corresponding re- 
sponsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so, 
under God, it will sustain you.” It is doubtful if 
the subsequent campaigns of Grant in Virginia 
added anything to’his military reputation. What 
he did there was accomplished by sheer hammer- 
ing in the full consciousness that he had unlim- 
ited men and supplies and authority back of him. 
But the nation trusted him with its men and its 
resources and gave him the full measure of its 
devotion because of what he had done at Donel- 
son, Shiloh, Vicksburg and Chattanooga. 
Lookout Mountain is well named. From the 
jagged rocks on its summit, twenty-three hundred 
feet above the level of the sea, one commands 
a magnificent view of the country round about. 
To the south one sees the hills of Alabama, to 
the south and east, Georgia, South Carolina, 
North Carolina, and to the east and north, Vir- 
ginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Seven states 
wave their banners in the face of him who stands 
on Lookout Mountain. In a vast bend the Ten- 
nessee River skirts the base of the mountain and 
is lost among the hills. Far in the distance gleam 
the white monuments amid the solitudes of 
Chickamauga. The river is inseparably linked 
with the name and fame of that Silent Soldier 
who brought the long war to a successful issue. 
On the banks of the Tennessee, at Fort Henry, 
the world had first heard of Grant. Once more 
the world heard of him on the April Sabbath at 
Shiloh on the banks of the same river; and once 
again at Chattanooga, where, on the banks of 
the Tennessee, he turned defeat into victory and 
opened an avenue for the invasion of the South 
from the west. He has other memorials—beauti- 
ful marble and finely wrought bronze—but here 
are his grandest monuments: the rugged moun- 


176 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


tain looking out over the States, east and west, 
north and south, and the broad river flowing si- 
lently by the mountain’s base on its long journey 


to the sea. 


XIII 
THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 
GARMENTS ROLLED IN BLoop 


Culpepper Court House, where Grant joined the 
Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1864, is forty 
miles south of Bull Run. After three years of desper- 
ate fighting, the Union armies were only forty miles 
nearer their goal. It looked as if little progress had 
been made, as if the vast expenditure of blood and 
treasure had been for nothing. But distances are often 
deceptive: they were decidedly so in this instance. 
The three years’ fighting had turned the left flank of 
the Confederacy, and the great river of the West was 
free from hostile forces. In the furnace of the war 
two splendid veteran armies had been developed, that 
now under Sherman in the west and the Army of the 
Potomac in the east. If Grant succeeded where so 
many before him had failed, it is but just to his pred- 
ecessors to remember that he fell heir to a rich inherit- 
ance. It was a finely tempered weapon that the nation 
put into his tried hands in the spring of 1864; other 
men had labored and Grant entered into their labors. 
But most important of all, the “coming man” had 
come; it had taken three years to bring him to the 
front, but now he was there. A matter of forty 
miles’ difference in the positions of the Army of the 
Potomac in 1861 and 1864 is by no means indicative 
of what had been accomplished during those three 
years. All the generals who had failed, through cir- 
cumstances, or through incompetence, all the men who 
had marched and fought, all the soldiers and officers 

Lise 


178 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


who died in those years, contributed to the final suc- 
cess of Grant and shared in his victory. 

The sun was high and hot when we rode down the 
main street of Culpeper Court House, past the home 
of General A. P. Hill, of Lee’s army, and out into a 
rolling farm country which reminded me not a little 
of the Cumberland Valley in Pennsylvania, only the 
houses were of timber instead of greystone, and stood 
far back from the road, usually at the head of a tree- 
bordered lane.* Fifteen miles through this charming 
country, and the fine pike degenerated into a dirt road, 
the white pillared houses gave way to shabby cabins, 
and the rich meadows faded into uncultivated barrens 
or wooded solitudes. At length we reined in our 
horses at the top of a hill. There it lay—the Rapidan! 
Still darkly flowing, deep and swift. Beyond was a 
sea of green; not a house, not a clearing, not a single 
spiral of hospitable smoke. We were on the edge of 
the Wilderness. Four times the Army of the Potomac 
had reached the Rapidan and four times it had crossed 
it. Three times it had been compelled to recross, de- 
feated, baffled and dispirited. 

On the same hill, on the morning of the fourth of 
May, 1864, Grant sat on his bay horse “Cincinnati,” 
silent, smoking, thoughtfully observing his army as it 
defiled down the roads to the Germana Ford. It must 
have been a brave sight: the sun dancing on the brass 
pieces of the artillery and reflected from the) white 
covers of the supply wagons; the long lines of march- 


*On this expedition through the Wilderness, I was ac- 
companied by Dr. Cheesman A. Herrick, President of Girard 
College, Philadelphia. On the second day out from Spott- 
sylvania, my horse gave me a bad fall, and with a broken 
right arm I had to ride from Spottsylvania through the Wil- 
derness and the Chancellorsville battlegrounds to Fredericks- 
burg. As I rode along with my broken arm, I recalled the 
great suffering which those Wilderness defiles had once 
witnessed when the ambulances of Grant’s army transferred 
the wounded from these forest battlefields to the base hos- 
pitals at Fredericksburg. 


THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 179 


ing troops, with reckless prodigality throwing away 
their blue overcoats till the roadsides were lined with 
a fringe of blue, these same careless veterans glancing 
up at the smoking chieftain and trying to take the 
measure of their new commander. Over the pontoons 
rumbled the artillery and the trains, clattered the cav- 
alry, with swaying tread marched the infantry; up the 
bank on the farther side, and then were lost in the 
wood. What was the silent General thinking of as he 
watched regiment after regiment vanish into the for- 
est, that deep, far-stretching, mysterious, ominous wil- 
derness which had seen other hosts march that way, 
which now put its arms so gently and so noiselessly 
about the new army that came to try its secrets? Burn- 
side, Hooker, and Meade, all had watched their armies 
go over the Rapidan, into the forest mystery; all had 
seen them recross, baffled, if not disastrously defeated. 
Would history repeat itself? 

By a path along the shady hillside and through a 
narrow gateway we rode our horses to a little house 
on the top of the hill in quest of dinner. In the shade 
of the porch at the back of the house sat an old man, 
his eye dim and his natural force much abated. He 
was not sure whether we could have dinner or not, but 
would consult his “old woman.” That person being 
favorably disposed, he came back and “reck. 
oned” that we could have a “snack.” While the 
“snack” was a-preparing, we rested on the porch, the 
rifle on the pegs overhead, underneath it the steel trap 
for fox or coon, and hanging down from the roof the 
strings of peppers. Our host had been born not far 
from where we were now sitting and had watched the 
army cross the river fifty-four years before. Once he 
had been to the county seat, fifteen miles distant, but 
never farther than that. Great armies had come and 
gone by his door; great tides of world politics had 
Swept by; but he had never wandered far away; and 
now his sun was sinking. 


180 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Much refreshed by “clabber,” honey, pork and 
hoe cake, we remounted our horses, crossed the 
bridge, and were swallowed up in the forest. The 
Wilderness is a tract of country lying along the 
south bank of the Rapidan, fifteen miles in length 
and about ten miles across at any given point. 
The title given it is no misnomer. Long before 
the war, the primeval forest had been cut away 
for the iron mines and the furnaces. In its place 
had sprung up a heavy second growth of low- 
branching oaks, dwarf pines, walnut, ash and 
chestnut. The abundant trees themselves would 
have proved a barrier and a menace to any army 
which attempted to maneuvre there; but their 
hindering, confusing power had been augmented 
by an impenetrable tangle of thickly twined un- 
derbrush, briers and vines woven together by the 
hand of nature. Cavalry and artillery alike were 
useless in such a tangle, and before many days 
had passed Grant sent most of his artillery back 
to Washington as a mere cumberer of the roads. 
In the battle that was soon to open, the combat- 
ants rarely saw one another, and fired only where 
they saw the smoke from the volley of their ad- 
versaries or heard the crashing of the underbrush. 
Grant’s army greatly outnumbered that of Lee, 
118,000 against 60,000; but with a thorough 
knowledge of the country and the few roads that 
traversed it, and because of the nature of the forest, 
completely screening its movements, able to hear 
and observe the attacking force, and yet not itself 
be heard or seen, the army on the defensive en- 
joyed advantages that did much to compensate 
for inferiority in numbers. 

Running east and west, about two miles 
apart, there are two principal roads in the Wilder- 
ness, the Orange Turnpike to the north and the 
Orange Plank Road to the south. Not far from 


THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 181 


the center of this Wilderness country these roads 
were intersected by the roads from the crossings 
of the Rapidan running northwest by southeast. 
There were a few farms and clearings, but for the 
greater part it was an unbroken solitude. Charles 
A. Dana, who was with Grant during the Wilder- 
ness campaign, writes that between the Rapidan 
and Spottsylvania Court House, he saw only 
twenty persons who were not soldiers. Now the 
soldiers were gone, but in the same country I saw 
not more than twenty persons. Of these twenty 
the greater number were school children playing 
about a lonely schoolhouse. We wondered 
whence the scholars came. 

The most pleasant spot in all that Wilderness 
was the clearing in the midst of which stood the 
Wilderness Church. A grassy lane, a hundred 
yards or more in length, and decently lined with 
hickory and chestnut trees, led from the main 
road to the white church with a bell in the tower. 
Back of the church slept the dead. Whenever I 
have seen these churches in the woods or in the 
fields, with the cemetery behind them, it has 
seemed to me as if they were an emblem of the 
Christian hope—the Church guarding its dead 
who had died in the Lord; in life the guide, in 
death the protector of man, a ‘pilgrim and a so- 
journer in life’s wilderness. Nor was it the name 
only, Wilderness, that made me think of that 
great Voice that once cried in the wilderness, 
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” Strange, too, 
that as a rule these Voices who cry for God in 
such wilderness sanctuaries have more of the John 
the Baptist ring about them, more to say about 
sin and repentance, than their brother Voices who 
cry in the midst of the great cities, and where it 
would seem the moral wilderness is denser and 
the need for repentance more crying. 


ioe HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


It had taken the Government three years to 
learn that the war could not be won by single, 
isolated movements, or victories, here a thrust 
and there a thrust, but by a concerted putting 
forth of the military power of the Nation. Grant’s 
Wilderness campaign was but one of five move- 
ments. The plan was titanic, and it all came from 
the mind of that general whom Richard H. Dana 
saw, a few days before the campaign opened, in 
the lobby of Willard’s Hotel in Washington, and 
described as “an ordinary, scrubby-looking man 
with a slightly seedy look.” In the order of their 
importance these different movements are as fol- 
lows: 1. Grant’s move towards Richmond, but 
with Lee’s army as fhe chief objective. 2. Sher- 
man’s campaign from Chattanooga into Georgia, 
with Johnston’s army and Atlanta as his goal. 
3. Butler’s campaign against Richmond from the 
south along the James River. 4. The contem- 
plated movement of Banks with twenty-five thou- - 
sand veteran troops against Mobile and then to 
co-operate with Sherman. 5. The campaign of 
Siegel up the Shenandoah Valley to stop supplies 
from that rich district going to Richmond and 
Lee’s army. The first plan depended, to a de- 
gree, upon the successful carrying out of the other 
four. But only Sherman was successful; Butler, 
Banks and Siegel all failed disastrously. 

Historians of the war are not agreed as to 
whether or not Grant, when he took the plunge 
into the Wilderness, and, as Lincoln put it, 
“crawled in and pulled in the hole after him,” 
expected to get clear of the Wilderness country 
before encountering Lee’s army. Badeau, Grant's 
military secretary, ridicules the suggestion; but 
Humphrey, Dana and Wood declare that he did. 
Perhaps the safest thing to say on the subject is 
that Grant hoped that he might get his army over 


THROUGH THE WILDERNESS _ 183 


the river and out of the Wilderness before having 
to fight Lee. The movement across the Rapidan 
commenced at midnight on the third of May, and 
by the evening of the fourth most of the army 
was over without molestation from Lee. That in 
itself was no inconsiderable achievement. But 
- Lee was not asleep. As soon as he learned that 
Grant had dared the perilous Wilderness journey 
he put his columns in motion along the two roads 
running parallel to one another and eastward 
through the forests. Lee was now marching due 
east, Grant southeast. The two roads gave Lee 
a splendid opportunity to strike at the right 
flank of the Union army. At seven o’clock on 
the morning of the fifth of May, Grant’s advance 
under the brilliant but ill-fated Warren encoun- 
tered Lee’s advance under Ewell. This was the 
beginning of the mighty contest of fighting, dig- 
ging and night marching that was to continue 
for several weeks. The battle raged until late 
in the evening, Grant anxious to dispose of Lee 
before Longstreet could come to his assistance, 
and Lee fighting desperately until his great lieu- 
tenant was in position to strike. Each side by 
impetuous drives and rushes gained local suc- 
cesses, but when the battle ceased at nightfall the 
relative position of the two armies was un- 
changed. Both generals ordered an assault at 
daybreak on the sixth, Lee striking a little earlier 
than Grant. Hancock, in the part of the line 
where he was assaulting, struck Hill’s Corps, the 
men of which were expecting to be relieved by 
Longstreet. With one of his characteristic suc- 
cesses, Hancock was driving Hill from the field 
in confusion when Longstreet’s Corps was rushed 
to the front and turned the tide against Hancock. 
This was at six-thirty in the morning. A flank 
movement by Longstreet compelled the with- 


184 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


drawal of Hancock’s forces, a great portion of 
the army of the Potomac now being under his 
command, to entrenchments occupied the previous 
day. Longstreet was moving his men to attack 
this position when, like Jackson, not far away in 
that same Wilderness, he was laid low by a volley 
from his own men, and the Confederate attack 
was fortunately postponed until four o’clock, when 
it was successfully withstood. At sunset, far out 
on the Federal right, Gordon made a dashing as- 
sault and captured two brigadier-generals. Thus 
ended the fierce and sanguinary battle of two days’ 
duration. Grant had lost over 17,000 men and 
Lee probably 19,000. 

In this wild struggle in the tangles of the forest 
the two armies fought as they stumbled upon one 
another, like blinded giants, or infuriated beasts. 
The different units had to fight it out as best they 
could, without much help or counsel from their 
officers. Wounded men crawled off into the 
thickets to die by themselves, or painfully drag- 
ged themselves along the ground in frantic efforts 
to escape the flames, for the woods had caught 
fire and many of the wounded who might have 
recovered from the thrusts and shots of their 
fellowmen fell victims to the fury of the flames. 
As General Longstreet was being carried to the 
rear, with his hat over his face as he lay on the 
stretcher, he heard his men remarking that he 
must be dead, and that in giving out the report 
that he was wounded his fellow-officers were try- 
ing to keep the army from discouragement. With 
that he lifted his hat from his face, and when 
they saw that he was not dead they greeted him 
with enthusiastic cheers. The incident is worth 
relating as indicative of how much men’s trust in 
the personality of a leader counts in the midst of 
a battle, or in any great crisis of human affairs. 


THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 185 


On the Union side, Wadsworth, commander of 
the Sixth Corps, had fallen as he was riding his 
horse over the Confederate works. He was a 
patrician and philanthropist from Geneseo, New 
York, representative of the highest type of 
Northern gentleman and officer. He died in the 
Confederate lines. An injured fellow-captive tells 
how he saw Wadsworth lying wounded at the 
base of a tree at a field hospital, a smile on his 
noble countenance and the fingers of his right 
hand playing with the trigger of a discarded 
musket, but in his eyes no speculation. 

The Wilderness “throbbed with the wounded.” 
More than 8,000 Federal wounded were started 
for Fredericksburg. So deserted now these roads, 
so still now these forest tangles; but one thought 
as one rode through them, of the long processions 
of agony that had once passed that way, and how, 
where one heard now only the mournful and pre- 
monitory cry of the whippoorwill, whose day 
commences with the night, one might have heard 
the cries of wounded men who lay in agony in 
the thick copses and sought for death but could 
not always find it. A New England grave bears 
this inscription: “Wm. T. G. Morton, by whom 
pain in surgery was averted and annulled; before 
whom, in all time, surgery was agony; since 
whom, science has control of pain.” That physi- 
cian and his marvelous discovery of ethereal 
anesthesia were with the army to bless the 
wounded who could be brought to the field hos- 
pitals. But many of them died in lonely thickets, 
with none to hear their cries, or perished miser- 
ably in the smoke and flame. A member of a 
rescue party relates how they came upon a badly 
wounded lad of the Confederate army painfully 
dragging himself over a grassy plot and gather- 


186 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


ing the violets which were growing there in pro- 
fusion. 

And what of him who was directing his first 
battle with the Army of the Potomac? It had 
been said here and there that Grant had never 
yet met Lee, and that when he did the laurels 
of Donelson, Vicksburg and Chattanooga would 
wither. The keeper of the Wilderness store 
pointed out to me the open knoll two hundred 
yards from the road where Grant had his head- 
quarters during the battle. On the opening days 
of this first campaign in the East, Grant honored 
the occasion by wearing the regulation sword, 
spurs, sash and uniform coat and waistcoat, a very 
unusual thing for him. On his hands were a pair 
of yellow-brown thread gloves. During the anx- 
ious hours on the fifth and sixth of May, he sat 
most of the time with his back against a tree, a 
cigar in his mouth, his gloves still on his hands 
and ever whittling a stick; when one stick was 
cut away he would break off another and com- 
mence on it. They who reviled us as a “nation 
of whittlers” would have felt that the criticism 
was deserved, had they seen the generalissimo of 
all our armies thus occupied in the critical mo- 
ments of the battle. But if his hands were whit- 
tling, his brains were working. Excited officers 
would ride up madly to headquarters and give the 
most disturbing accounts of reverses that were 
overtaking them, but Grant neither in speech nor 
in behavior betrayed the slightest sign of pertur- 
bation. One single incident suffices to show the 
mind of the new Commander. When the fighting 
of the fifth was at its height, Grant issued an 
order that the bridges in his rear over the Rapidan 
be taken up. The Army of the Potomac now 
had a Commander who thought more about the 
front than the rear. It is our old friend, the same 


POROUGH CET ROW LEDER RNESS) 187 


Grant whom we have seen order Smith and Wal- 
lace to retake the positions lost before the works 
at Donelson, or calmly smoking amid the trees 
at Shiloh, surprised, from the standpoint of mili- 
tary theory and tactics deserving to be defeated, 
but keeping his men at it with never a thought of 
retreat or defeat. That spirit soon communi- 
cated itself to his new army. They were wonder- 
ing, those men in blue, if, after the losses and hard 
fighting in the two days’ struggle in the Wilder- 
ness, the army was to retreat as it had done so 
many times before. On the night of the seventh, 
the army was set in motion towards Spottsyl- 
vania Court House. At first the tired fighters and 
marchers hardly knew which way they were go- 
ing, but by and by the words passed down the 
line, “Grant is moving to Richmond!” This was 
what they had been waiting to hear, and when- 
ever Grant rode by, mounted now on his black 
pony, “Little Jeff,” the men in the ranks made the 
woody defiles shake with their cheers. Those 
night cheers were more significant for the army 
of Lee than salvos of artillery, for they told that 
the Army of the Potomac now had a Commander 
who would make it fight, not one or two, but if 
necessary, a hundred battles until that for which 
they were contending had been secured. Those 
Wilderness cheers sounded the death knell of the 
Confederacy. 

We had ridden past the turning for Spottsy- 
Ivania, and were well on our way towards 
Chancellorsville when we discovered our mis- 
take. A negro woodsman told us that by fol- 
lowing the trail of a wagon hauling ties through 
the woods, we would come out on the Brock 
Road. After a ride of several miles over a 
trail, where we were often in perplexity as to 
which path to take, we emerged upon the Brock 


188 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Road. It was by this road that Grant marched 
his army when he strove to get to Spottsy- 
lvania before Lee. By one of the accidents of 
war, Lee was there before him. The advance 
of Lee, under R. H. Anderson, had orders to 
move to Spottsylvania on the eighth of May, 
but finding the woods on fire where he halted 
on the seventh, and being unable to go into 
bivouac, Anderson marched his corps into 
Spottsylvania. Grant’s object in moving on 
Spottsylvania was twofold: to thrust, if possible, 
his army between Lee and Richmond, and to keep 
Lee so engaged that he could not detach troops 
from his army to attack Butler who had come to 
grief at Bermuda Hundred on the James River. 
But once again he found Lee strongly entrenched 
on his path. 

The country, though still sparsely settled, be- 
came less wild as we rode towards Spottsylvania. 
At a crossroads, with night beginning to come 
down, we came upon a gray monument sur- 
rounded by iron rails. Drawing rein, I read the 
name. It was Sedgwick, the fine Commander of 
the Sixth Corps. On the afternoon of the Ninth, 
as the army was getting into position about 
Spottsylvania, Sedgwick went forward to recon- 
noiter. Bullets were falling in the vicinity, and 
Sedgwick, seeing a private soldier dodging, re- 
proved him, exclaiming, ‘““They couldn’t hit an 
elephant at that distance!” The next moment 
he crashed to the ground with a bullet through 
his brain. He was carried to General Meade’s 
headquarters where a rustic bower, fitting cata- 
falque for one who perished in that Wood of 
Ephraim, was built for his body. Out of the 
Wilderness, at length, he was carried to Cornwall, 
Connecticut, where he slept with his fathers. 

A storm that had been muttering at our back 


THROUGH THE WILDERNESS _ 189 


all afternoon broke with fury just as we cantered 
into the quaint court house town and found 
refuge at the inn. Hail rattled on the windows 
and roof; but it was not the hail of lead that 
Spottsylvania had known on another May day. 

We were off at an early hour the next morn- 
ing to ride over the scene of the fierce fighting at 
the famous Salient. Tying our horses near the 
main road, we took a trail through a lonely, 
rolling forest tract until we came out at a farm- 
house, picturesquely sheltered beneath a mighty 
oak. The farmer had been a boy at the time of 
the war, and remembered well the terrible sights 
that he had witnessed after the battle. Standing 
by the monument to New York and New Jersey 
troops, we were able to get a very clear idea of 
just what took place on that twelfth day of May, 
1864. In order to avoid low ground, the Con- 
federate line towards their center had been thrust 
forward three-quarters of a mile, thus forming a 
salient projecting towards the forest in which the 
Union army was entrenched. Both armies now 
took no chances in the matter of defense, and 
whenever the march was over, they threw up de- 
fensive barriers with the greatest skill and dis- 
patch. On the tenth, Colonel Emory Upton, 124th 
New York Volunteers, led a smashing assault 
on the left center of the Confederate army and 
got well into Lee’s works; but the co-operating 
force failed to come up, and Upton was forced to 
relinquish his hard-earned ground. For the gal- 
lantry and skill of his charge Grant made Upton 
a brigadier-general on the ground. 

Upton, who won his brigadier-generalship by 
his charge at Spottsylvania, was the chief figure 
in what, so far as the officers of the regular army 
were concerned, can be called the first battle of 
the Civil War. He was a cadet at West Point at 


190 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


the time of the John Brown Raid. This raid 
created the most intense feeling among the cadets 
from the South. One of them, M. B. Young, of 
Georgia, afterwards a well-known cavalry leader, 
was heard to declare in the hearing of a Massa- 
chusetts cadet during the John Brown trial: “By 
G ! I wish I had a sword as long as from 
here to Newburg and the Yankees were all in a 
row! I’d like to cut off the head of every damned 
one of them!” Upton, before coming to West 
Point, had been a student at Oberlin College, 
Ohio, an institution noted for its Abolition sym- 
pathies. Wade Hampton Gibbes, of South Car- 
olina, made some slurring remark to a fellow- 
cadet about Upton’s student life at Oberlin and 
his association with negroes. The remark was 
repeated to Upton, who promptly called upon 
Gibbes for an explanation. The result was a 
fist-fight under circumstances of great excitement 
in a room of the First Division. Those who were 
able to get into the room and saw the fight have 
never reported what happened, but General 
Morris Schaff, who was in the crowd outside on 
the stairway, relates how John Rodgers, Upton’s 
classmate and second, came to the head of the 
stairs and, with his eyes glaring like a panther’s, 
said to the Southern sympathizers below him: 
“If there are any more of you down there who 
want anything, come right up!’ This fist-fight 
between the two cadets, one from South Carolina 
and the other from New York, was a prelude to 
the bitter struggle which was to follow. When 
the batteries at Fort Johnson opened fire on 
Fort Sumter in the early morning of April 12, 
1861, the first shot was fired by the hand of Wade 
Hampton Gibbes. . 

Despite heavy losses on the tenth, Grant deter- 
mined to make another effort to break Lee’s 





THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 191 


lines. Hancock, the best corps commander in 
the army for attack, was selected for the great 
effort. The men formed in the woods, and at four 
on the morning of the twelfth, went “over the 
top,’ out of the woods, and into the open, up one 
slope, down the other side, and then up the second 
slight elevation at the top of which were the 
Confederate trenches on the edge of the forest. 
With tremendous enthusiasm, Hancock’s men 
swarmed over the Confederate works, taking four 
thousand prisoners, among them two generals, 
Edward Johnson and George H. Stewart. On 
through the trees they drove the disorganized 
Confederates until, about a mile in the rear, they 
encountered Lee’s second, or interior, line. That 
line saved Lee’s army. In the intoxication of 
success and in the confusion of the rush through 
the woods, Hancock’s men had become disorgan- 
ized, and now in their turn were hurled back 
through the woods as far as the first line of 
trenches which they had taken. Here they de- 
fended themselves against five Savage assaults. 
Nearly all of those who saw anything of this 
bloody hand-to-hand conflict at the first line of 
Confederate works, the Union army holding them, 
the Confederates trying to regain them, agree 
that the fighting at the Spottsylvania Salient was 
the most desperate that the Army of the Potomac 
ever witnessed. From early morning on _ the 
twelfth until early morning on the thirteenth, the 
two armies fought one another with only a line 
of log works intervening. Men received fatal 
thrusts through the openings between the logs, 
and daring hands would reach over and pull 
prisoners across the logs into their own lines. 
At length, Lee gave up the effort to retake the 
works and retired to his second line. The fight 
had cost him 4,000 prisoners and as many more 


192 HIGHWAYS. AND BYWAYS 


dead and wounded. The Federal loss was 6,800. 
When the two captured generals were brought 
to Hancock’s headquarters, Hancock went for- 
ward and gave them a generous welcome. Gen- 
eral Johnson took his hand with cordiality, but 
General Steuart declined to shake hands, saying, 
with a gesture of refusal, “Under the present cir- 
cumstances, I must decline to take your hand.” 
With that, Hancock, as quick in repartee as in 
assault, answered, “Under any other circum- 
stances I should not have offered it.” The excite- 
ment of defeat and disaster sifts men’s souls and 
lets in the light on littleness and poverty of spirit. 

When Hancock was driving the Confederates 
through the woods early in the morning, and it 
seemed that Lee’s center had been broken, Lee 
went forward to where Gordon’s men were form- 
ing for the advance, with the evident intention 
of leading the charge himself. But Gordon spur- 
red his horse in front of “Traveler,” and, taking 
him by the bridle, checked him and called out, 
“General Lee, you shall not lead my men in a 
charge. No man can do that, sir; another is here 
for that purpose. These men are Georgians, Vir- 
ginians, Carolinians. You must go to the rear, 
General Lee!” At once the men took up the 
saying and the echo, “General Lee to the rear!” 
rolled from regiment to regiment. The incident 
is perpetuated in the Gordon monument, a stir- 
ring piece of bronze in the front of the state 
capitol at Atlanta, Georgia. 

Charles A. Dana in his Recollections gives this 
account of what followed the battle: “The ground 
was thick with dead and wounded men, among 
whom the relief corps was at work. The earth, 
which was soft from the heavy rains we had been’ 
having before and during the battle, had been 
trampled by the fighting of the thousands of men 


“THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 193 


until it was soft like thin hasty pudding. Over 
the fence against which we leaned lay a great pool 
of this mud, its surface as smooth as that of a 
_ pond. As we stood there, looking silently down 
at it, of a sudden the leg of a man was lifted up 
from the pool and the mud dripped off his boot. 
It was so unexpected, so horrible, that for a mo- 
ment we were stunned. Then we pulled ourselves 
together and called to some soldiers near by to 
rescue the owner of the leg. They pulled him out 
with but little trouble, and discovered that he was 
not dead, only wounded. He was taken to the 
hospital where he got well, I believe.” 

Pointing to a tall tree near the farmhouse, I 
said to the farmer who had been showing us over 
the ground, “That tree, I suppose, was here at 
the time of the battle?” ‘No, sir; all those trees 
have grown up since the battle was fought.” Then 
I began to count: fifty-three years had come and 
gone; fifty-three times the forest had blossomed 
and faded since that springtime battle. Fifty- 
three times the red and yellow leaves of October 
had covered the passionless mounds where slept 
the nameless dead. Yes, a new generation of 
trees had come since then, and a new generation 
of men. 

“By the left flank” had been the plan of Grant’s 
campaign up to this point, and continued to be 
until the bloody repulse at Cold Harbor. It 
consisted of a dogged effort to turn Lee’s right 
flank and get between him and Richmond. In 
the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, again at the 
North Anna—whither Grant marched his army 
after the battle at Spottsylvania, and where he ex- 
tricated himself from a dangerous position, two 
wings of his army being over the river with Lee 
between them, and neither wing able to reinforce 
the other without twice crossing the river—and 


194 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


finally at Cold Harbor, Lee by masterly move- 
ments flung his army in the path of Grant and 
thwarted his plan. On the afternoon of the 
eleventh of May, during the day’s interlude in the 
fighting at Spottsylvania, Elihu Washburn, 
Grant’s chief friend at court, was leaving head- 
quarters for Washington. He asked Grant for 
some message that he might take to the Presi- 
dent. Grant then sat down and wrote the letter 
to Halleck in which was included the now famous 
sentence, “I propose to fight it out along this line 
if it takes all summer.” This line of campaign he 
did follow up to the reverse at Cold Harbor. 
After that, baffled, and with the army and the 
country both disappointed, Grant changed his plan 
and threw his army across the James and attacked 
Richmond from the south. 

Cold Harbor was one of the few engagements 
in the war when both officers and men deliber- 
ately disobeyed orders and refused to advance 
against positions which they felt could not be 
taken. In the eight minutes of the first charge 
more men fell than during any similar period in 
any battle of the war. Grant himself admitted his 
blunder and looked upon Cold Harbor as his 
greatest mistake and Vicksburg as his best fought 
campaign. This bloody battle was fought over 
the very ground where McClellan’s army, two 
years before, had clashed with Lee at the begin- 
ning of the Seven Days battle. Cold Harbor is 
almost within sight of the spires of Richmond. 
Two years before, McClellan had brought his 
army to that point with comparatively insignifi- 
cant losses. But, from the time he commenced 
his campaign on the Rapidan up to the repulse at 
Cold Harbor, thousands upon thousands of graves 
marked the trail of Grant’s advance. The san- 
guinary nature of the fighting of the Army of the 


THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 195 


Potomac under Grant’s command is best illus- 
trated by a comparison of the number killed in 
action under Grant and under the other com- 
manders. Under McDowell, McClellan, Pope, 
Burnside, Hooker and Meade, this number was 
15,745, and under Grant, 15,139. Thus, his list of 
killed in eleven months, from May 4, 1864, to the 
surrender at Appomattox, April 9, 1865, was 
only 606 less than that of the army under six 
commanders and during three years of war. But, 
despite the fearful casualty lists appearing in the 
newspapers, the nation continued to put its faith 
in Grant and said with Lincoln, “I can’t spare 
this man—he fights!” 


XIV 
NASHVILLE 
SLow BUT SURE 


In front of the capitol in Nashville, a rearing 
horse of bronze bears a stern, thin-visaged man 
in the uniform of a major-general of the United States 
Army. If this stern soldier had been President of 
the United States at the time of the weak and 
vacillating Buchanan, perhaps there would have 
been no Civil War, and the battle of Nashville 
would never have been fought. In those days of 
doubt and misgiving, there were not a few who 
thought of the old man then sleeping in peace at 
the “Hermitage” by the side of his beloved 
Rachel, and wished for one hour of Andrew Jack- 
son. 

It was a warm spring day when I walked up 
the avenue between the rows of stately cedars 
and, taking the path going off to the right from 
the noble old mansion, entered the garden and 
stood by the modest sepulchre which he had built 
for himself and his wife, and where he desired 
that his body should rest, instead of in the sar- 
cophagus of the Roman Emperor, Alexander 
Severus, which had been brought from Palestine 
by Commodore Elliot and proffered to Jackson as a 
resting place. In answer to the proposal of Com- 
modore Elliot, Jackson replied as follows: “I 
cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid 
in a repository prepared for an emperor or a 
king. My republican feelings and principles for- 
bid it. True virtue cannot exist where pomp and 

196 


NASHVILLE ier 


parade are the governing passions; it can only 
dwell with the people—the great laboring and 
producing classes that form the bone and sinew 
of our confederacy. I have prepared an humble 
depositary for my mortal body beside that 
wherein lies my beloved wife, where, without any 
pomp or parade, [I have requested, when my God 
calls me to sleep with my fathers, to be laid.” In 
keeping with the wishes of this democratic con- 
fession of faith and this noble valedictory to the 
vicissitudes of life, the stern old soldier sleeps 
now in a modest sepulchre beside his wife. The 
stone bears this inscription: 


General Andrew Jackson 
Born March 15, 1767 
Died June 8, 1845 


Then follows his own epitaph for his wife: 


Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife 
of President Jackson, who died the 22nd of Decem- 
ber, 1828, age 61 years, Her face was fair, her per- 
son pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; 
she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow- 
creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the 
most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor 
she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the 
wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an orna- 
ment; her piety went hand and hand with her be- 
nevolence and she thanked her Creator for being per- 
mitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous 
slander might wound, but could not dishonor; even 
Death, when he bore her from the arms of her hus- 
band, could but transport her to the bosom of her 
God. 


As I stood reading the affectionate inscription, 
with the branches bending low over the tomb and 
the mocking birds and bullfinches pouring out 


198 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


their springtime melody in the garden, defying 
death, as it were, with their passionate song, there 
came to my mind the words of the dead hero, 
“The Union must and shall be preserved!” It 
was fitting that the battle which dispelled any 
doubts as to whether or not the Union was going 
to be preserved, should have been fought at Nash- 
ville, and where the sound of its cannon echoed 
over the grave of him who, with all his faults, was 
ever a lover of his nation and exalted and de- 
fended its unity. 

In the romance and tradition which have 
gathered about Sherman’s march from Atlanta to 
the sea, the notable achievement of General 
Thomas at Nashville has been almost forgotten. 
When Grant took supreme command of the Union 
forces he was counting on the operations of 
Sherman’s army to bring the war to an end not 
less than on the army under his own immediate 
command. After taking Atlanta, both Grant and 
Sherman looked upon Mobile as the next ob- 
jective. But the operations of Hood, the new 
commander of the army confronting Sherman, 
necessitated a change in plans. On July 17, 1864, 
Joseph E. Johnston, an able soldier who had skil- 
fully contested the advance of Sherman from 
Chattanooga, was superseded by John Bell Hood. 
Hood was then thirty-four years of age, a trained 
soldier, full of fight and daring, having lost an arm 
at Gettysburg and a leg at Chickamauga. Both 
Grant and Sherman rejoiced at the change in 
commanders, for they now hoped for an oppor- 
tunity to crush his army in open fight. Hood did 
not stand to defend Atlanta, but turned towards 
the northwest to strike at Sherman’s communica- 
tions with Chattanooga and Nashville. It was an- 
ticipated that Sherman would have to follow him, 
and Jefferson Davis had prophesied a retreat like 


NASHVILLE 199 


that of Napoleon from Moscow. Sherman did 
follow him as far as Snake Creek Gap, where he 
had been five months before, although he still 
kept his hold on Atlanta. Then he made the bold 
decision to cut loose from Atlanta, march to the 
sea, and then join Grant, leaving it to Thomas to cope 
with Hood. The success, therefore, of Sherman’s 
movement was wholly dependent upon the success 
of Thomas at Nashville. On September 29th, 
Thomas had been sent back to Chattanooga and 
then on to Nashville. There he gathered a force 
of about fifty thousand men, some of them colored 
troops, some of them raw recruits, and many of 
the cavalry unmounted. 

Hood crossed the Tennessee River below the 
Muscle Shoals, near Florence, Alabama, with 
some forty thousand men. He planned to seize 
Nashville, and make it a base for an invasion of 
Kentucky. After that he had dreams of taking 
his army through the mountains and falling upon 
the rear of Grant before Petersburg. Schofield 
had been sent forward by Thomas to observe 
Hood and feel his force. He was not to risk a 
stand-up fight. But the Confederate advance was 
so rapid that Schofield could not avoid a battle 
on November 30th, at Franklin. For the time 
of its duration, a little more than one hour of 
daylight, this was the bloodiest battle of the war. 
The Confederate generals, aroused to a pitch of 
desperation, led their men in furious charges 
against the strong Union position. The Union 
loss was only 189 killed, while that of the Con- 
federates was almost 2,000 killed, among them, 
Patrick Cleburne, the ablest division commander 
in the west. Schofield continued his retreat to 
Nashville and joined his forces with Thomas. 

The invasion of Hood caused no little alarm in 
the North, and Grant himself began to fear the 


200 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


worst. He bombarded Thomas with telegrams, 
urging him to attack Hood, and warning him lest 
he should carry the war to the Ohio River. Dur- 
ing these days there was occasional rain followed 
by freezing. This left the ground in no condition 
for maneuvering an army, especially in an attack 
upon the strongly posted army of Hood along 
the Brentwood Hills, four miles south of Nash- 
ville. Grant telegraphed him that “Now is one 
of the finest opportunities ever presented of 
destroying one of the three armies of the 
enemy.” But Thomas could not be moved to 
make an attack before he was ready by telegrams 
from Grant and the War Department, any more 
than he could be dislodged from the hills of 
Chickamauga by the furious assaults of the Con- 
federate infantry. He was not asleep to his 
chance, but he waited until the ice had melted 
and he could move with certainty of success. In 
answer to Halleck’s appeal that Grant was dis- 
pleased with his delay, Thomas wired, “I feel 
conscious that I have done everything in my 
power to prepare, and that the troops could not 
have been gotten ready before this. If General 
Grant shall order me to be relieved, I will submit 
without a murmur.” There spoke the manly 
soldier and unselfish patriot. As he sat at head- 
quarters, baffled by the elements, he said to his 
cavalry leader, General J. H. Wilson, ‘‘Wilson, 
they (meaning Grant and the War Department) 
treat me as though I were a boy and incapable of 
planning a campaign or fighting a battle. If they 
will let me alone I will fight this battle just as 
soon as it can be done, and will surely win it; but 
I will not throw victory away nor sacrifice the 
brave men of this army by moving till the thaw 
begins.” General Logan, then visiting Grant at 
City Point, was given authority to relieve 


NASHVILLE 201 


Thomas, and started at once for the west. But 
he was not to make public the order until reach- 
ing Nashville, and, in the meantime, if Thomas 
had moved, he was not to deliver it at all. But so 
uneasy was Grant that he determined to go west 
himself, and had gone as far as Washington when 
the news came of the first successes of the Union 
army on December 15th. Logan had reached 
Louisville when he heard of the victory and went 
no further. 

The long period prayed-for thaw had come, and on 
the morning of December 15th Thomas, by a skilful 
turning movement, drove the left wing of the Con- 
federate army out of its strong position on the Brent- 
wood Hills. This necessitated a new line of defense 
for Hood’s army. On the morning of the sixteenth 
the negro troops under Steedman made an unsuccess- 
ful assault on the Overton Hill, a steep eminence on the 
Confederate right. To strengthen his extreme left 
under Chalmers, Hood weakened his line at Shy Hill. 
Schofield was sent against this position by Thomas 
and about the same time the cavalry under Hatch 
came in by the rear along the Granny White turnpike. 
This broke the Confederate line and the defeat became 
a disastrous rout. Had the Union cavalry been 
mounted, it is a question if any of Hood’s troops 
would have escaped. In his own account of the battle 
Flood writes: “Our line thus pierced gave way; soon 
thereafter it broke at all points, and I beheld for the 
first and only time a Confederate army abandon the 
field in confusion.”* In the battle, and during the 
pursuit of the next few days, 13,000 prisoners and 72 
cannon were taken. It was the only important battle 

*In his “Advance and Retreat,” General Hood, describ- 
ing the confusion and panic which had overtaken his army, 
tells how a young lady of Tennessee rushed out into the midst 
of the fleeing soldiers and, regardless of the hail of bullets, 


implored them in the name of God and country to turn and 
face the enemy again. 


202 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


of the war in which one of the armies was completely 
broken up and destroyed. More prisoners were taken 
than after any victory up to that time, with the 
exception of Donelson and Vicksburg. From now on 
Sherman was free in his movements and the doom of 
the Confederacy was sealed. The work which had 
commenced one spring day at St. Louis when Na- 
thaniel Lyon took Camp Jackson was now completed on 
this December day on the hills south of Nashville. The 
Mississippi Valley had been thoroughly subjugated and 
the left flank of the Confederacy was crushed. 

General Horace Porter, who was on Grant’s staff 
both in the west and in the east, says that these weeks 
of the campaign which ended in the great victory of 
Thomas at Nashville were the most anxious period 
in his entire military career. He shrank from doing 
an injustice to the faithful and capable Thomas, and 
yet his long delay occasioned the deepest anxiety for 
the issue of the campaign in the west. Had Hood not 
been repulsed, the whole military situation, east and 
west, would have changed, to the very serious disad- 
vantage of the North. Hence the deep anxiety of 
Grant. There was never a warm cordiality between 
these two distinguished officers, but as soon as Grant 
heard of the way in which Thomas had wrecked Hood’s 
army, he made honorable amends for any supposed 
lack of appreciation of the qualities of Thomas by 
telegraphing him: ‘The armies operating against 
Richmond have fired two hundred guns in honor of 
your victory.” As one hundred guns had been the 
salute fired in honor of other victories, the unusual 
recognition of the victory at Nashville shows how 
highly Grant esteemed the work of Thomas. In his 
estimate of the character and ability of Thomas, Grant 
speaks of him as “‘inert,’’ and quotes the saying of 
his army comrades, ‘““Thomas is too slow to move and 
too brave to run away.” In his final report at the 
close of the war, Grant wrote a number of pages criti- 


NASHVILLE 203 


cizing Thomas and explaining his reasons for remov- 
ing so distinguished a commander, but he generously 
suppressed that part of the report, not wishing to de- 
tract in any way from the fame of Thomas. 

As we drove out along the Granny Pike we found 
little to remind us of this most brilliant victory of the 
war. ‘The hills were green with the tender leaves of 
spring and white with the dogwood blossoms. Granny 
White’s cottage is gone and only the old well remains. 
There you will find neither marker nor monument to 
tell of this crowning victory. There was one farmer 
who would point out Overton Hill where the “niggers 
got it’; but that was all. 

The soldier who struck this great blow at Nashville 
was a Virginian. Writing to his brother John from 
Pittsburgh, in June 1861, General Sherman said con- 
cerning the Federal army under General Patterson: 
“There are two A-number-one men there—George 
Thomas, Colonel Second Cavalry, and Captain Sykes, 
Third Infantry. Mention my name to both and say 
to them that I wish them all the success they aspire 
to, and if, in the varying chances of war, I should ever 
be so placed, I would name such as they for high places. 
But Thomas is a Virginian from near Norfolk and, 
say what he may, he must feel unpleasantly at leading 
an invading army. But if he says he will do it, I 
know he will do it well. He was never brilliant but 
always reliable and steady, maybe a little slow.” The 
opportunity to suggest Thomas for a high place came 
to Sherman sooner than he imagined. In August, 
1861, Sherman, in conference with Lincoln as to the 
appointment of new brigadier-generals, suggested 
Thomas. He gives the following account of the in- 
terview and what followed: “His reply was that 
Thomas was born in Virginia, and there were some 
doubts as to his loyalty. In my most earnest manner 
I protested indignantly against this most cruel ac- 
cusation. I said: “Mr. President, Old Tom is as loyal 


204 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


as I am, and as a soldier he is superior to all on your 
list Mr. Lincoln said, ‘Will you be responsible for 
him?’ and I unhesitatingly replied, “With the greatest 
pleasure.’ The President instantly sent his name 
among others to the Senate. In the afternoon of that 
day I went to the Senate Chamber to see my brother, 
John Sherman, of Ohio, and he told me of the names 
on the list of brigadier-generals that had been sent to 
the Senate, and said they had all been confirmed, 
Thomas with the rest. I then began to recollect that 
I had not seen Thomas for twenty years, and I had 
become responsible for him.* It was a hot day, and 
the thing so worried me that I went to the War De- 
partment and asked where Colonel Thomas, now 
Brigadier-General, was to be found. I was told, in 
Maryland, some eight or ten miles from the city. So 
I ordered a carriage and started at once, my anxiety 
to see him impelling me to urge the driver to make as 
rapid time as he could. When I arrived at the place 
I inquired where Colonel Thomas was; and the ser- 
geant of the guard went with me to Thomas’ tent, and 
found that he was in the saddle superintending some 
movement of the troops. Controlling my impatience, 
I waited in no easy frame of mind, that sultry day, 
for his return, and as there is an end to everything, 
Thomas came back at last and we greeted one another 
heartily. ‘Tom,’ said I, ‘you are a brigadier-general.’ 
‘T don’t know of anyone that I would rather hear such 
news from but you,’ he replied. ‘But,’ I said, ‘Tom, 
there are some stories about your loyalty. How are 
you going?’ ‘Billy,’ he replied, ‘I am going south.’ 
‘My God!’ I exclaimed, ‘Tom, you have put me in an 
awful position; I have become responsible for your 
loyalty.’ ‘How so?’ said he; so I related to him the 
conversation between President Lincoln and myself, 


* Sherman evidently forgot a brief meeting with Thomas 
when the latter was in Patterson’s army in the Cumberland 
Valley. 


NASHVILLE 205 


when he leaned back and remarked, “Give yourself no 
trouble, Billy; Iam going south, but at the head of my 
men.’ And so he did, and no nobler man, no braver, 
better soldier, and no more courteous gentleman ever 
lived.’’* 

How Thomas kept his promise let Mill Spring, 
Stone River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and 
Nashville answer. It was this Virginian, reviled in 
the South and under suspicion in the North, whose 
command saved the day at Stone River when McCook 
and Sheridan had been swept from the field; this same 
Virginian against whose lines in the pines at Chicka- 
mauga the whole Confederate army flung itself only 
to be tossed back like waves breaking on a rocky coast; 
it was his soldiers who carried the rifle pits in their 
inspired charge up Missionary Ridge; and now it was 
the army under his command which annihilated the 
army of Hood at Nashville. 

Thomas was one of the great personalities of the 
Civil War. In his first days as a cadet at West Point, 
he showed that courage and grim determination which 
afterwards served the nation so splendidly on many 
a hard-fought field. An upperclassman came into his 
room one evening to give orders to Thomas and his 
two room-mates. Whereupon Thomas arose and, 
walking over to him, said: ‘Leave this room immedi- 
ately, or I will throw you through that window!’ 
Thomas had one of the faults of strong, independent 
characters, an over-sensitiveness to what he conceived 
to be a slight to his rank or his ability. When Grant 
came to take command of the operations at Chatta- 
nooga after the defeat at Chickamauga, Thomas, al- 
though loyally co-operating, resented what he thought 
was an imputation that he himself was not sufficient 


*Sherman’s conversation with the Hon. Thomas L. James 
at the time of the dedication of the Garfield Memorial at 
Sana in May, 1890. (Copée’s Life of Thomas. pp 319, 


206 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


for the crisis. Like Meade, Thomas was deeply of- 
fended because he was passed over when Grant made 
Sheridan Lieutenant-General of the army, and he 
nursed this wound to the day of his death. Sherman, 
who says he knew Thomas better than any man living, 
pays tribute to his strength, calmness and imperturb- 
ability, and then adds: “Yet, of all my acquaintances, 
Thomas worried and fretted over what he considered 
neglects or acts of favoritism more than any other.” 
Sherman tried to get Thomas to go with him to Grant 
and have a frank talk about his rank and appointment, 
but this Thomas refused to do. In discussing the mat- 
ter of the lieutenant-generalship of the army and the 
passing over of Meade and Thomas when Sheridan 
received the commission, Sherman writes that Con- 
gress should have provided by law for three lieutenant- 
generalships for these three great soldiers and should 
have dated their commissions with “Gettysburg,” 
“Winchester,” and “Nashville.” “It would have been 
a graceful act and might have prolonged the lives of 
two most popular officers who died soon after, feeling 
that they had experienced ingratitude and neglect.” 


XV 
THE PETERSBURG MINE 


BLACK GLORY AND WHITE DISHONOR 


The Virginia sun shone so fiercely at midday that I 
could hardly make out the inscription on the monument 
to the 48th Pennsylvania Regiment, whose men dug the 
mine that was exploded under the Confederate 
lines in July, 1864, and I was glad to turn away 
and follow a road which led through the fields 
until I came to a farmhouse on the verge of a 
forest. At my hail a woman appeared and offered 
to conduct me to the famous crater. Remnants 
of the Confederate trenches were plainly visible as 
we walked through the woods, and it was not 
difficult to people them again with their ragged 
soldiery. As I was thinking of those days and 
imagining those scenes, we came suddenly upon 
what is left of the crater, an irregular gap in the 
ground, about fifty yards in length and five to ten 
feet in depth and sixty feet across. Around the 
crater was a fringe of trees, oak and beech. A 
few hundred yards in front of me was the little 
ravine where the mine had been started within 
the Union lines. Besides ourselves not a human 
being was in sight. Fifty years before, thousands 
of men had waited anxiously with all eyes fastened 
upon that one spot under the trees. Here, as in 
a maelstrom, met the opposing currents of two 
hostile armies, with a whole nation anxious for 
the outcome. How strange, then, this silence and 
solitude, broken only by the wing of bird or the 
cry of a squirrel. The generals, the armies, the 


207 


208 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


tents, the soldiers, Confederate and Union, black 
and white, all gone, vanished completely. So time 
stills the fury of each successive generation; yes- 
terday’s solitude becomes the busy mart of today, 
and today’s busy mart becomes the wilderness of 
tomorrow. To me both silence and solitude were 
grateful, for I was the better able to summon up 
the great events that once had transpired in that 
deep and wide gash in the hillside. | 

After the bloody repulse at Cold Harbor, Grant 
transferred his army to the south side of the 
James River and invested Petersburg, the “back 
door’ to Richmond. By attacks on the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth of June, the 9th Corps, un- 
der command of Burnside, had taken an advanced 
position within one hundred and thirty yards of 
the Confederate line and fronting a strong posi- 
tion called Elliott’s Salient. It was at this time 
that Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants sug- 
gested to his divisional commander, General Pot- 
ter, that a mine be dug under the Confederate 
lines. Burnside and Potter were favorable to the 
movement, but General Meade and Major Duane, 
Chief Engineer of the Army of the Potomac, were 
sceptical, saying that a mine of such a length had 
never been excavated in military operations, that 
the whole thing was “claptrap and nonsense.” 
Colonel Pleasants was a mining expert and most 
of his men were from the anthracite coal region 
of Pennsylvania. They entered heartily into the 
project. The mine was started in a hollow just 
back of the advanced Union lines. The chief diffi- 
culty was to dispose of the earth taken out of the 
excavation. It was carried out in cracker boxes 
reinforced with hickory strips and hoops of iron 
taken from barrels. Green boughs were cut and 
strewed over the ground where the earth was 
dumped, so as to hide the operations from the 


GCHGCNNOM NOINNA 





THE PETERSBURG MINE 209 


eyes of the Confederates. Pleasants’ miners dug 
with the greatest energy, and by the seventeenth 
of July the main gallery, 510 feet in length, was 
completed and two lateral galleries were thrust 
under the fort and the contents of 320 kegs of 
powder stowed away in eight different magazines. 
The magazines were connected by wooden tubes 
half-filled with powder, and these in turn were 
connected with the three lines of fuses in the main 
gallery. 

The explosion was set for the thirtieth of July. 
A few days before, Grant had ordered Hancock 
and Sheridan to make a diversion on the north 
bank of the James, with the thought that Lee 
would withdraw some of his forces from the 
Petersburg lines for the defense of Richmond, and 
thus weaken the opposition to be met with when 
the mine was exploded and the assault made. In 
this Grant was not disappointed. Lee moved 
eight of his divisions to the north side of the 
James to protect Richmond and the railroad, but 
on the evening of the twenty-ninth, Hancock and 
Sheridan recrossed to the south bank of the James 
and were brought up to support the expected as- 
sault on the thirtieth. 

Burnside had in his corps a division of colored 
troops under command of General Ferrero. For 
days the negroes had been carefully drilled in a 
plan of attack and had rehearsed their charge with 
the greatest enthusiasm. But at the last moment, 
and to the overthrow of the whole operation, 
Burnside was compelled by his superiors, Meade 
and Grant, to substitute a division of white troops. 
This was the initial and fatal blunder. Meade 
represented to Grant that the negro division had 
not been in contact with the enemy, and if the 
assault should prove a failure he and Grant would 
be blamed for “shoving these people ahead to get 


210 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


killed because we did not care anything about 
them.” Grant permitted Meade to overrule Burn- 
side, but when he testified before the Committee 
on the Conduct of the War, said that if Burnside 
had been allowed to go ahead with his original 
plans, the assault would have been a success, in- 
stead of “a stupendous failure.” 

When the negroes were withdrawn, Burnside 
had his other division commanders draw lots for 
the difficult and dangerous post. The lot fell 
upon Ledlie and his division was put in position 
for assault the moment the mine was sprung. 
Meade had given Burnside particular instructions 
to have his parapets and abatis prepared so as 
to let through the assaulting columns and to have 
entrenching tools distributed among the men. 
These instructions were apparently entirely over- 
looked by Burnside. In a personal talk with 
Burnside, Meade had impressed upon him the 
necessity of pushing forward to the ridge beyond 
the part of the line to be broken by the mine, 
and that the taking of the crater would be useless 
unless this was done. All that Burnside was 
urged to do he failed to do, and all that he was 
warned against doing he did. 

In making the assault on the thirtieth, Grant 
was counting on the “psychological moment.” 
Wild rumors were abroad in the Confederate 
lines of what was going on, and the Confederates, 
unable to see their subterranean foe, were filled 
with unrest, not knowing when the slumbering 
volcano would belch forth destruction upon 
them. “I somewhat based my calculations,” 
writes Grant, “upon this state of feeling.” At 
quarter past three o’clock on the morning of the 
thirtieth, Colonel Pleasants lighted the fuses to 
the magazines. For an hour the army waited 
anxiously for the explosion, when two courageous 


THE PETERSBURG MINE 211 


men from the 48th Regiment, Lieutenant Jacob 
Doughty and Sergeant Henry Reese, volunteered 
to enter the mine and learn the cause of the delay. 
They found the fuse burned out at one of the 
splices and relighted it. The whole army was 
under the greatest tension. Ledlie’s division 
which was to make the assault lay on their arms 
with ears and eyes attent. The gunners of 
eighty-one siege guns and mortars and as many 
field guns stood about their pieces ready to pull 
the lanyards the moment the crash came. 

At exactly sixteen minutes before five o’clock 
the mine exploded. It was a terrible spectacle, 
alarming enough to those who stood ready to at- 
tack, but carrying terror to the hearts of the 
enemy who suddenly felt the earth quake beneath 
them. Like an immense cloud the mass of earth 
rose into the air, taking with it men, guns, cais- 
sons, carriages and timbers. So near and so men- 
acing was this cloud of debris that the first line 
of the Union assaulting column, fearing that it 
would break over their heads, drew back from 
their advanced positions. Within the Confederate 
lines there was wild consternation, and Grant and 
his staff, as they watched, could see men running 
in every direction. Never was there a more 
favorable opportunity for a complete crushing of 
the enemy. But fate willed otherwise. 

Slowly, very slowly, because no opening had 
been made for them, Ledlie’s division filed out of 
the Union trenches and marched across the inter- 
vening two hundred yards of terrain, heading 
straight for the crater. Here a strange and ter- 
rible sight met them. The great hole, 150 yards 
long, 60 wide and 25 deep, was strewn with huge 
pieces of clay, fragments of carriages and timbers, 
with men’s heads, feet and arms protruding from 
the earth. So unique and awful was the sight 


212 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


that the front ranks of men in Ledlie’s column 
seemed to forget that they had come to fight and 
paused on the brink of the chasm to gaze and 
wonder. The men coming up from the rear 
pressed against the front ranks and pushed them 
over the edge into the crater. The 2nd Brigade 
went first into the pit and was followed at once 
by the Ist, the men becoming inextricably mixed 
and all order of the line being lost, and what was 
worse, could not be restored because of the 
crowded pit into which they had been pushed. 
The men could only find a footing by facing into 
the crater and digging their heels into the earth 
and clinging to the banks with their hands. And 
all the time more men came sliding and tumbling 
into the fatal hole, creating a veritable hell of 
stench, horror and confusion. A few troops of 
the supporting columns turned to the right or leit 
and attacked the trenches there, but the majority 
kept pressing over the edge of the crater, and the 
others, feeling themselves in danger, soon turned 
from the Confederate trenches into the safety of 
the crater. It was the sunken road of Ohain over 
again. 

The startled Confederates had gathered their 
wits together and their guns began to train upon 
the writhing mass in the pit. Mahone’s men, at- 
tacking, drove out the Union soldiers who had 
gained a lodgment in the trenches to the right 
and the left of the pit. Major Powell was sent by 
Colonel Marshall, commanding the advance bri- 
gade, to report the conditions to General Ledlie. 
He found that gallant soldier sitting safely in a 
bombproof within the Union lines. He repeated 
Burnside’s order to go forward, but it was im- 
possible to reform the lines either within or with- 
out the crater. General Potter’s second division 
had followed the men of the first division into 


THE PETERSBURG MINE vA) 


the dust and wreckage of the crater, and now, 
at eight o’clock, as if there were not enough con- 
fusion and debacle, Ferrero’s division, the colored 
troops, was sent in. From six until eight o’clock 
these troops lay in the covered ways waiting for 
an order to advance and watching the wounded 
carried past them to the rear. General Ferrero 
sent a protest to General Burnside against the 
movement of his troops, saying that three divi- 
sions of white troops were already huddled to- 
gether in the crater. The business of leading 
colored troops was the most hazardous in the 
service, for so great was the feeling in the Con- 
federate Army against them that in case of defeat 
neither officers nor men had much chance of com- 
ing out alive. This feeling was shown in the 
frightful massacre of the colored troops defending 
Fort Pillow, which Forrest reported in these 
words: “The river was dyed with the blood of 
the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The ap- 
proximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, 
but few of the officers escaping. My loss was 
about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts 
will demonstrate to the Northern people that 
negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.” 
The same attitude was expressed by Hood when, 
demanding the surrender of the garrison at Re- 
saca, Georgia, he wrote to the commanding 
officer: “I demand the immediate and uncondi- 
tional surrender of the post and garrison under 
your command, and should this be acceded to, all 
white officers and soldiers will be paroled in a few 
days. If the place is carried by assault, no pris- 
oners will be taken.” All this was not unknown 
to the colored troops or to their officers. Many 
heroes were “carved in ebony” that day, and the 
officers of the division, with the terrible exception 


214 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


of the commanding general, acquitted themselves 
with distinction. 

As soon as the negroes got into action the ad- 
vantage of their course of training for the charge 
was evident, and had they been permitted to go 
in first, even without the presence or counsel of 
their general, they would have won a notable vic- 
tory. The division moved to the right of the 
crater and striking the enemy’s lines captured 
several hundred prisoners. Back of them came 
the men of the 18th Corps under General Ord. 
The negroes, having taken a part of the trenches 
to the right of the crater, were led by one of their 
heroic brigadiers against the ridge in the rear of 
the crater and the key to the whole battlefield. 
But there they were met with a fierce charge by 
Mahone’s men and were driven back to the 
trenches near the chasm. This created confusion 
among the negro regiments holding the trenches, 
and a general rush was made for the fancied 
safety of the crater. One division of Ord’s troops 
and the men of Potter’s, who were outside the 
crater, were caught in the stampede and hurled 
back into the pit. 

The crater was now a scene of indescribable 
confusion. The vast pit was filled with a strug- 
gling mass of white and colored troops, cowering 
against the steep sides and vainly seeking shelter 
from the fire of the Confederate artillery which 
was directed against them. The blood of men 
wounded near the top flowed in streams down the 
yellow sides of the crater and gathered into pools 
at the bottom. Men wounded on the edge of the 
pit came rolling down its steep sides, or ran 
screaming and cursing through the mob. The sun 
was now high and the day was one of fearful heat. 
The men suffered terribly from thirst, and soon 
a wave of moisture produced by the breathing of 


THE PETERSBURG MINE Z15 


the bloody, seething, struggling, perspiring mass 
rose like a cloud over the scene of horror. 

By this time it was clear to all that the assault 
was a “stupendous failure.” But the problem was 
how to get the men out of the crater and back to 
the Union trenches over the open field swept by 
Confederate guns. Messages were sent to Burn- 
side that if shovels and picks were sent in, the 
men could dig a passage back to the Union lines. 
But nothing was done. For hour after hour, the 
tortured men squirmed and dug and burrowed in 
the awful chasm. Between one and two o’clock., 
Mahone’s men made another fierce assault and 
two of the brigadiers in the crater on their own 
responsibility gave the order to retire, and the 
troops fell back to the Union lines, leaving behind 
them four thousand dead, wounded and prisoners. 

“Someone had blundered.” Whatever honor 
there was in that day of disaster belonged to the 
despised negroes. They proved that they them- 
selves knew how to fight for their own freedom. 
General Meade at once asked for a Court of In- 
quiry. The findings of the Court exonerated him 
and placed the blame upon Burnside and _ his 
division commanders, with the exception of Pot- 
ter. T’he Congressional Investigating Committee 
found that the disaster was due to the fact. that 
the attack was led by white troops instead of the 
specially drilled colored troops. General Grant 
himself concurred in this opinion. There was a 
total lack of unity of military thought, and in that 
lack both Meade and Grant must share the blame, 
although the chief burden lay upon the shoulders 
of gallant, but slow and blundering, Burnside. 
Once again this unfortunate general was the chief 
actor in a “stupendous failure” and tragic fiasco. 
At Fredericksburg he had sent his men to slaugh- 
ter in the impossible assault upon Marye’s Hill, 


216 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


and now once more he saw the troops under his 
command go to disaster in the crater. In the 
former instance he ordered an impossible move- 
ment; in the latter a movement that promised 
great and notable success came to a grim failure 
because of his inefficiency. In his appraisal of 
the different corps commanders under him, Grant 
speaks thus kindly and truly of Burnside: “Gen- 
eral Burnside was an officer who was generally 
liked and respected. He was not, however, fitted 
to command an army. No one knew this better 
than himself. He always admitted his blunders 
and extenuated those of his officers under him 
beyond what they were entitled to. It was hardly 
his fault that he was ever assigned to a separate 
command.” 

But the tragedy of that day was not the ineffi- 
ciency of the corps commander nor the incom- 
petence of the division commanders, but that at 
least two of the division commanders “proved also 
to possess disqualifications less common among 
American soldiers.” They were cowards. While 
the heroic negroes were vainly charging the ridge 
beyond the crater, and while the whole mass of 
misled troops was struggling beneath the fearful 
sun at the bottom of the crater, looking in vain 
for leaders or orders, led as sheep to the slaughter, 
where were the division commanders? Two of 
them, Ledlie and Ferrero, were crouching in 
bomb-proof shelters within the Union lines, giving 
their absurd orders to the dying men in the pit. 
A shameful stain had been put upon the honor of 
the American officer. But against the dark and 
sinister background of cowardly generals, the 
heroism and devotion of the negro troops stands 
out in noble proportions, an imperishable monu- 
ment to the possibilities of their race. The honors 
of that day rested not with the white Union 


THE PETERSBURG MINE Ze 


troops, and still less with the Confederate troops, 
who, driven mad by the sight of their former 
chattels in arms against them, hacked and stabbed 
with unparalleled and unpitying ferocity and 
cruelty; but with the patient blacks, chanting their 
plantation melodies as they went forward into 
battle, glad to lay down their lives and leave purer 
and freer the world that had refused them a name 
and a place. 


XVI 
ANDERSONVILLE 


Tue DEscENT INTO HELL 


The bloodiest battle of the Civil War was 
Gettysburg, in which 3,721 Union soldiers were 
killed in action. But from June to September, 
1864, almost three times that number, 8,589, died 
in the terrible stockade at Andersonville, Georgia. 
Andersonville was the deadliest battle of the war. 

In July, 1862, commissioners for the North and 
South signed a cartel providing for the exchange 
of prisoners of war; but through the abuse of 
parole and the unwillingness of the South to ex- 
change negro prisoners, the cartel soon fell into 
disuse, and subsequent exchanges of prisoners 
were made by special arrangement. 

The Confederate Government under the pres- 
sure of military necessity was later in the war 
willing to waive the matter of the negro soldier 
and proposed the resumption of the cartel. That 
this proposal was not accepted by the United 
States is the chief defense put forward by South- 
ern writers for the dreadful suffering and high 
mortality in their prison camps. The deplorable 
situation at Andersonville and elsewhere could 
have been relieved if the North had agreed to 
exchange prisoners. This argument is perpetu- 
ated in stone at Andersonville, where a monument 
has been erected by the Daughters of the Con- 
federacy to Captain Henry Wirz, the officer in 
command of the prison at Andersonville, and who 


ANDERSONVILLE 219 


was tried and hanged by the Federal Government 
at the end of the war. On one side of the monu- 
ment is the following excerpt from a letter of 
General Grant to General Butler, on August 
18, 1864: 


It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not 
to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in 
the ranks to fight our battles. At this particular time 
to release all rebel prisoners would insure Sherman’s 
defeat and would compromise our safety here. 


The inference is that if Grant had consented 
to full exchange of prisoners there would have 
been no tale of horror at Andersonville. General 
Sherman took the same view as Grant when Hood 
made proposals to him about the exchange of 
prisoners and the relief of the situation at Ander- 
sonville. He declined on the ground that the 
prisoners he held would at once be put into the 
ranks of Hood’s army, whereas those which he 
took in exchange would have to be sent to the 
different armies of which they were a part when 
captured. 

In conversation with Butler, Grant explained 
very carefully his reasons for the stand he had 
taken against exchanges, saying that the North 
sent back well men who went at once into the 
ranks, whereas the South sent back sick men, 
who, by the Federal regulations, would at once 
have three months’ furlough. The 26,000 prison- 
ers then held by the North would give to Lee a 
larger corps of veteran and well-fed troops than 
he then possessed, and make the campaign that 
much longer and bloodier. The refusal to ex- 
change would also put a stop to the temptation to 
non-American or non-patriotic soldiers in the 
armies, who had been drafted or had enlisted for 


220 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


the bounty, to let themselves be taken prisoners 
and then sent home. 

Grant had a tender heart, was very sensitive to 
the scenes of suffering in the field, and was, as 
events were soon to show, magnanimous above 
the average. But when it came to the matter of 
the fierce duel between himself and Lee, he could, 
for the sake of his cause and the nation, take a 
position of great severity. When, in January, 
1865, the Confederate Government again offered 
to exchange man for man, Grant accepted the pro- 
posal which he had previously declined, for he saw 
that the end could not be far off. If by the ex- 
change of prisoners the success of Grant’s cam- 
paign and that of Sherman would have been 
jeopardized, and the war thus prolonged, Grant 
was justified in his refusal to exchange, even al- 
though it meant misery to thousands of loyal men 
at Andersonville and elsewhere, for the severe 
way would, in the end, prove to have been the 
merciful way. Looking back now at the course 
of military events and considering the number of 
men the North then had under arms, and the 
straitened resources of the Confederacy, one is 
not impressed with the argument that the addi- 
tion to the Confederate ranks of all the prisoners 
held by the North would have had any appre- 
ciable effect upon the issue of the war. Before 
the capture of Atlanta, Sherman had permitted 
General Stoneman to make a cavalry raid upon 
Jonesboro and Andersonville, the latter place be- 
ing the depot for Union prisoners, as many as 
twenty-three thousand being confined there at 
one time, poorly fed and harshly treated. It was 
hoped that this dash of Stoneman and the cavalry 
would liberate them. But instead of liberating the 
captives at Andersonville, Stoneman was himself 
captured and his command broken up. Jefferson 


ANDERSONVILLE 221 


Davis made application to send cotton to Liver- 
pool to purchase supplies for the Confederate 
prisoners in the North. This request was granted, 
but upon the condition that the cotton be sent to 
New York and the supplies bought there. In 
1864 a delegation of Federal prisoners at Ander- 
sonville was sent North to plead their cause at 
Washington. Nothing came of the petition and 
their leaders complained of contemptuous treat- 
ment at the hands of Stanton, the Secretary of 
War. 

The chief prisons in the North were at Point 
Lookout, Maryland; Camp Douglas, Chicago; 
Springfield, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Colum- 
bus, Ohio; Johnson’s Island, Ohio; and for the 
officers, Elmira, New York; Rock Island and 
Alton, Illinois, and Fort Delaware, Delaware. The 
mortality among the Confederate prisoners in 
these camps was very high, yet among the re- 
turned prisoners and the people of the South 
there was never any fierce clamor of accusation 
against the conditions in these prisons. These 
considerations should temper one’s judgment 
when confronted by the terrible inhumanities 
practiced at Andersonville and elsewhere in the 
South. Complete records for mortality among the 
Union soldiers in Confederate prison camps are 
lacking, but according to the most reliable statis- 
tics 194,743 Union prisoners were held in Con- 
federate camps. Of these 30,218 died in captivity. 
In the Northern prisons 214,865 men were con- 
fined. Of these 25,976 died in captivity. This 
would make the mortality in the Northern prisons 
twelve per cent and in the Southern prisons fifteen 
per cent. In his Rise and Fall of the Confederate 
Government, Jefferson Davis quotes Stanton and 
Surgeon-General Barnes as his authorities for a 
different enumeration, according to which the 


pee HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


mortality was twelve per cent in the Northern 
prisons and nine per cent in the South. But even 
taking the figures more favorable to the North, 
the difference is very little. When one takes into 
consideration, too, the abundance of medicine, 
food and clothing in the North and the superior 
shelter provided, the high death rate among the 
Confederate prisoners is a mystery. General 
Butler offers this very reasonable explanation that 
the Confederate soldiers were undernourished 
when captured, and that their low vitality made 
them an easy prey to disease. 

The most severe arraignment of the Northern 
prisons comes from the pen of Henry M. Stanley, 
the explorer, who was captured at the battle of 
Shiloh and confined at Camp Douglas, Chicago. 
Since he was English, and was released from the 
prison upon enlisting in the Federal Army, his 
account is at least free from the charge of preju- 
dice. He describes the prison as a vast “cattle 
yard with a line of whitewash about fifty feet 
from the fence and running parallel with it.” This 
was the dead line, which if he crossed any prisoner 
might be shot. He makes no complaint about the 
food or shelter, but protests against the rigid 
exclusion of ‘every medical, pious, musical or 
literary charity that might have alleviated our 
sufferings.’ Vermin and filth were the chief 
enemies. As at Andersonville the latrines were 
poorly located. “On the way thither we saw 
crowds of sick men who had fallen prostrate from 
weakness, and given themselves wholly to despair, 
and while they crawled or wallowed in their filth, 
they cursed or blasphemed as often as they 
groaned. ... Every morning the wagons came 
to the hospital and the dead house to take away 
the bodies; and I saw the corpses rolled in their 
blankets, taken to the vehicles, and piled one upon 


ANDERSONVILLE 223 


another, as the New Zealand frozen mutton car- 
casses are carted from the docks!” Stanley makes 
no accusation against the prison officials or the 
United States Government. “It was the age that 
was brutally senseless and heedlessly cruel.” 

The traveler who sits down to rest in Holly- 
wood Cemetery, in Richmond, near the grave of 
Jefferson Davis and the beautiful memorial to 
Winifred Davis, can see Belle Island in the midst 
of the James River. Until the establishment of 
Andersonville this was the chief prison in the 
South. There, on the sandy and low stretches of 
the island, forbidden access to the high and pleas- 
ant wooded portions, without any adequate shel- 
ter, thousands of the youth of the Northern 
armies languished in captivity. At that point the 
James is a tempestuous and angry stream, leaping 
and foaming over the rocks. But the love of free. 
dom is strong, and many a Union soldier per- 
ished in the yellow, turbid waters of the James in 
a vain effort to swim the river. The other prison 
of importance was the Libby warehouse. This 
was for officers. Here the treatment was severe 
and the fare meager, but the men were protected 
from the inclemencies of the weather. Occasional 
complaints are made against Libby, but there was 
no widespread cry of indictment. The chief count 
against Libby prison was the placing of a mine of 
powder underneath it with a threat to blow it up 
should the prisoners make any attempt to escape. 
This was at the time of Dalghren’s raid and al- 
leged finding of letters on his body indicating a 
plot to free the prisoners and fire the city and 
assassinate the Government. It is generally 
agreed now that these letters were a forgery. 

The one name that comes to mind when the 
subject of prisons is mentioned is Andersonville. 
The increase in the number of prisoners, the 


224 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


scarcity of provisions, and the approach of Union 
armies towards Richmond made it wise to remove 
the prisoners there to a more remote section. The 
place chosen was Andersonville, in southwestern 
Georgia, in one of the most fertile regions of the 
South. Here a tract of twenty-seven acres was 
fenced off in the form of a parallelogram with a 
stockade twenty feet high. On the inside of the 
stockade and about twenty feet from it ran a rail- 
ing which constituted the dead line beyond which 
none dared venture. A small stream ran through 
the center of the enclosure and at the lower por- 
tion of the stream were the latrines. On either 
side of the stream was marshy land, reducing the 
available area to twenty-three acres. Not the 
slightest provision was made for shelter, although 
the country about was well wooded and the 
prisoners could soon have made themselves huts. 
In this human corral there were penned up at one 
time as many as 32,000 captives. All trees had 
been cut down and the fierce Georgian sun smote 
upon the men. Even if they had had sufficient food 
and clothing and medical stores, the crowding to- 
gether of so many human beings would have been 
terrible of itself. Each man had less than six 
square feet, and there were times when they had 
to fight for a place to lie down. In the rainy 
weather the trampling of so many thousands of 
feet and the necessities of so many thousands of 
human bodies turned the place into a vast morass, 
the filth of which was indescribable and the stench 
of which was oppressive at the distance of a mile. 
The men were forbidden tools of any sort, and 
whatever shelters they were able to secure they 
had to contrive with their hands or by digging 
with tin cup and plates in the ground. 

The commander of the prison was a German- 
Swiss, a Captain Henry Wirz, who had settled in 


ANDERSONVILLE 225 


Louisiana, where he practiced medicine until the 
outbreak of the war. His superior was General 
John H. Winder, who had charge of the prison 
arrangements in the Confederacy. Winder was 
a cruel and wicked man and certainly would have 
been hanged along with Wirz had not death sum- 
moned him to a higher tribunal. 

For evidence as to the awful and inexcusable 
conditions at Andersonville there is no need of 
having recourse to the testimony of Union pris- 
oners. The confidential reports of Confederate 
agents is proof overwhelming. One of these re- 
ports was made by Colonel D. T. Chandler, 
Assistant-Adjutant and Inspector-General in the 
Confederate Army. His report charges Winder 
with advocating leaving the prisoners as they 
were until death had so reduced them in number 
that the accommodations would be ample. He 
tells of the absolute lack of any sanitary arrange- 
ments and the pestilence-breeding filth that every- 
where prevailed. Sick, starved, and depressed, 
seli-respect sank and crime broke out among the 
prisoners, six men being tried and hanged by the 
prisoners themselves for their misdemeanors. The 
dead were carted out daily and buried without 
coffins, “their hands in many instances being first 
mutilated with an axe in the removal of any finger 
rings they may have.” Chandler recommended 
that no more prisoners be sent to Andersonville 
and that some of those then there be transferred 
elsewhere. He speaks of the stockade as “a 
place the horrors of which it is difficult to de- 
scribe and which is a disgrace to civilization.” 

In September, 1864, Dr. Joseph Jones went to 
Andersonville to make investigations in behalf of 
the medical department of the Confederate Army. 
He was a graduate of the University of Pennsyl- 
vania and professor of medical chemistry at 


226 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Augusta, Georgia. He spent three weeks at the 
camp and his report is a document of horror al- 
most without a parallel in military history. Here 
we see the wretched captives lying in the caves 
they had digged out of the soil; walking deject- 
edly about in the dismal enclosure, ragged and 
haggard, wasted with fever and diarrhcea, or de- 
voured with gangreen and cancer. The sick were 
lying in their own filth and neglected, robbed and 
maltreated by their nurses. For two thousand 
sick men in one hospital there was but one 
medical officer. The atmosphere was loaded 
with animal exhalations and the soil was saturated 
with filth, and everywhere death and pestilence 
stalked unchallenged. Ulcers, sores and hemor- 
rhages, bleeding gums and swollen lips told of 
the ravages of the scurvy, which had been induced 
by the poor fare and foul animal emanations. 

In this prison hell the most pitiful of the suf- 
ferers were the neglected sick. “The haggard, 
distressed countenances of these miserable, com- 
plaining, dejected living skeletons, crying for 
medical aid and food, and cursing their govern- 
ment for its refusal to exchange prisoners, and the 
ghastly corpses with their glazed eyeballs staring 
up into vacant space, with the flies swarming 
down their open and grinning mouths, and over 
their ragged clothes, infested with numerous lice, 
as they lay among the sick and the dying, formed 
a picture of helpless, hopeless misery, which it 
would be impossible to portray by words or by 
the brush.” His report concludes by saying that 
“this gigantic mass of human misery calls loudly 
for relief, not only for the sake of suffering hu- 
manity, but also on account of our own brave 
soldiers now captives in the hands of the Federal 
Government.” 

A pack of dogs was kept to run down the 


ANDERSONVILLE 22/7 


fugitives who tried to escape from their stockade. 
These animals were encouraged to tear and 
mangle the prisoners whom they tracked, and, 
according to the indictment brought against 
Wirz, fifty Union soldiers suffered death through 
being torn by the dogs. It was to Ambrose 
Spencer, a citizen of Sumter County, that General 
Winder remarked when Spencer wondered at him 
cutting down the trees in the stockade which 
would prove shelter for the prisoners: “That is 
just what I am going to do; I am going to build 
a pen here that will kill more damned Yankees 
than can be destroyed at the front.” This wicked 
boast was made good in a ghastly fashion. The 
number of Union soldiers who perished in the 
cruel stockade was 13,000, and this out of a total 
prison population of 49,000, and during a few 
months. 

One of the chief causes of suffering among the 
prisoners was the insufficient supply of water. 
The little stream which flowed through the com- 
pound was soon polluted by the necessities of 
30,000 men. The men went for their water as 
far up the stream as possible, venturing close to 
the dead line and dipping up the water with cups 
fastened to long poles. Had the stockade been 
enlarged a little it would have taken in a portion 
of the Sweet Briar stream, and much suffering 
would have been alleviated. But where man was 
cruel, God was kind. One day during the sum- 
mer there burst forth near one end of the en- 
closure a pure and vigorous spring. The thirsty 
prisoners hailed it with delight, and every morn- 
ing at sunrise a thousand men could be seen wait- 
ing in line to draw water out of the well. Like 
the water that gushed forth at the stroke of 
Moses’ rod, many of the captives regarded the 
breaking out of this spring as a direct interven- 


228 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


tion of Heaven in their behalf and named it 
Providence Spring. The incident is commemo- 
rated in the inscription which Iowa has placed 
upon the monument to the sons of that state who 
perished in the stockade: 


They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any 
heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the 
throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto liv- 
ing fountains of water; and God shall wipe away 
all tears from their eyes. Rev. 7:16, 17. 


And on the base: 


“God smote the hillside and gave them drink.” 
Aug. 16, 1864. 


The “exceeding great and bitter cry” that went 
up to God from this place of bondage and found 
an echo in thousands of homes and villages in the 
Northern states where friends and relatives spoke 
in despair the dreadful word “Andersonville”— 
what effect did it have on the South? What im- 
pression did it produce within the councils of the 
tottering Confederacy? There were not lacking 
individuals, both officials and private citizens, who 
cried out against the inhumanity and besought the 
government to put a stop to it. One interesting 
letter which came to Jefferson Davis, and by his 
secretary forwarded to the Secretary of War, was 
signed by a “Poor Man.” He wrote: “Please 
read the sixth chapter of Second Kings (should 
be Second Chronicles, 28). Follow the example of the 
King of Israel. Send the prisoners at Anderson- 
ville home on their parole. Send them home be- 
fore the cold proves more destructive of their lives 
than the heat has been in the open and unshaded 
pen your officers provided for them. It will prove 
the greatest victory of the war and do our cause 


ANDERSONVILLE 229 


more good than any three victories our noble 
troops have gained.” The passage from the Old 
Testament referred to in the letter tells of the 
command given by the prophet Oded to the north- 
ern kingdom at Samaria, that they should treat 
kindly and send home to Jerusalem the captives 
that they had taken from Judah in war. 

Alexander H. Stephens, the brilliant Vice- 
President of the Confederacy, advocated that the 
prisoners be paroled and sent home. He sug- 
gested that Jefferson Davis visit the stockade and 
aiter solemnly addressing the prisoners upon the 
nature of the conflict, how the South was fighting 
not against the Union but for principles upon 
which the Union was based—extend to them an 
unconditional release. He thought that such an 
act of generosity, together with plentiful copies of 
his address, would have great influence in the 
North and prove an effective instrument for the 
South in her struggle. But Davis was not mag- 
nanimous enough to do it. The captives were 
doomed, doomed by their jailers, as well as by 
their own Government, which, for the sake of a 
righteous victory, and for the greater mercy in 
the end, shut up its bowels of mercy towards its 
imprisoned soldiers and refused to take them back 
in exchange. 

In a very interesting colloquy between Alex- 
ander H. Stephens and Professor Norton, the lat- 
ter asked Stephens whether he thought the fact 
that the Federal Government refused to exchange 
prisoners for any cause whatsoever justified the 
cruelties which were practiced upon the men at 
Andersonville. Stephens replied that it certainly 
did not, and then proceeded to deny that there 
had been any systematic policy of inhumanity. 
The question of Professor Norton goes to the 
heart of the whole terrible matter. The refusal 


230 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


of the North to exchange prisoners was no excuse 
for what transpired at Andersonville. If, as the 
Southern apologists allege, the South was not able 
to feed, shelter, nurse and clothe the men left on 
their hands by the refusal of the North to ex- 
change, then the South owed it to humanity to 
parole them and let them go. A state has no 
right to hold prisoners when it cannot care for 
them. Some will say that the close contact with 
slavery had perverted the conscience of the South 
and dulled her finer susceptibilities and prepared 
her to look with indifference upon what was tak- 
ing place in that remote corner of Georgia. 
Others will see in the awful tragedy not so much 
an indictment of the slave-holding Confederacy as 
an indictment of war, showing how it strips from 
men the carefully woven garments of civilization 
and hardens them till they can look with indif- 
ference upon the misery and suffering of man, 
who, of all God’s creatures, stands in the greatest 
need of kindness. Not since the victorious Syra- 
cusans huddled together the vanquished Athenians 
of Nicias and Demosthenes in the fatal stone 
quarries of Sicily, has war written so dark a con- 
demnation of itself as it did at Andersonville in 
Christian Georgia and America. 


XVII 
ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 


CHATTANOOGA TO ATLANTA 


The fifth of May, 1864, was a great day for our 
country, and for the world, for on that day the 
Army of the Potomac moved out from its position 
north of the Rapidan and started on its long and 
bloody campaign against Lee’s army and Rich- 
mond. And on the same spring day, Sherman 
rode out from Chattanooga and commenced the 
march which was to carry him through Georgia 
to the sea, and thence through the Carolinas to 
Durham, North Carolina, a distance of a thousand 
miles. The march which began on the fifth of 
May, when Sherman rode out from Chattanooga 
to Ringold, ended on the twenty-sixth of April, 
1865, when Johnston met Sherman at the Bennett 
farmhouse and surrendered his army. For this 
great undertaking Sherman possessed one of the 
finest armies that ever followed a flag. It was 
composed of three units: the Army of the Ten- 
nessee under the command of James Birdseye 
McPherson, the Army of the Ohio under Henry 
Schofield, and the Army of the Cumberland under 
the command of that great soldier and patriot, 
George Thomas. The corps commanders were 
Howard, Hooker, Palmer, Logan and Dodge, 
three of them professional soldiers, and Logan and 
Palmer civilians who had already distinguished 
themselves in the war. The whole host counted 
98,797 men and 254 guns. Confronting Sherman 

231 


232 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


at Dalton, Georgia, lay a Confederate army of 
42,856 men and a very limited supply of artillery. 
In command of this army was Joseph E. Johnston, 
the Fabius Maximus of the Confederacy, and 
among the Confederate officers who had been in 
the United States Army he had held the highest 
rank, that of brigadier-general. Johnston had 
seen little active service since he was wounded at 
Seven Pines, in May, 1862. He had under him 
very able corps commanders, Hardee the tactician, 
Polk the Bishop, and Hood, the fighter. 

The chief objective of Sherman was not Atlanta, 
but Johnston’s army, just as the chief objective of 
Grant’s campaign, opening on the same day, was 
not Richmond but Lee’s army. This campaign 
marked the first great concerted effort on the part 
of the armies of the United States. The foe was 
to be pressed on all fronts and at the same time. 
What the Entente Allies after four terrible and 
wasteful years did against the Central Powers, the 
United States, in 1864, commenced then to do 
against the Confederacy. Grant thus sums up the 
situation: “Before this time various armies had 
acted separately and independently of each other, 
giving the enemy an opportunity often of deplet- 
ing one command not pressed to reinforce an- 
other more actively engaged. I determined to 
stop this.” He did stop it, and that most effec- 
tually. Besides these two great movements under 
Grant and Sherman, there were to be accompany- 
ing strokes, one in the west by Banks against 
Mobile, and the other in the east against Rich- 
mond by the way of the James under Butler. Both 
of the minor movements were abortive. 

On my way to catch the morning train at the 
Chattanooga-Atlanta depot, I took a last look at 
the towering eminence of Lookout Mountain and 
Missionary Ridge. The great movement which I 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL Boo 


was about to trace had not been possible without 
the victories won on those mountains. As I 
boarded the train, I paused to scan the famous old 
engine, “General.” Early in April, 1862, James in 
Andrews, a spy in the employ of General Buell, in 
company with a number of soldiers, all in civilian 
dress, started from Shelbyville, Alabama, to make 
their way through the mountains to Marietta, 
Georgia. They gave themselves out to be Ken- 
tuckians traveling south to join the Confederate 
Army. Some were captured or delayed and only 
twenty made the rendezvous at Marietta. The 
men bought tickets from Marietta for different 
points along the railroad between that and Chat- 
tanooga and boarded a moving train going west 
and north. The train stopped eight miles out 
from Marietta at a Confederate camp, Big Shanty. 
The crew hurried to their breakfast leaving the 
train unguarded. Andrews and his men uncoupled 
a section of the train, threw open the lever and 
were steaming out of the camp before the amazed 
soldiers realized what was taking place. As they 
proceeded towards Chattanooga, they tore up 
rails, cut wires, and burned bridges, doing an 
enormous amount of damage. Andrews told all 
questioners that he was an agent of Beauregard 
and was running an impressed powder train 
through to the army about Corinth. A pursuing 
train was soon on their trail and finally, not far 
from Chattanooga, the raiders had to abandon 
their engine and take to the hills. In a week the 
whole party was captured. Being in citizen’s 
dress, they were held as spies. A court-martial 
condemned the leader and seven to death. The 
others were never brought to trial because of the 
advance of the Union forces. The engine is a 
curious-looking machine, with the hexagonal 
smokestack which marked the locomotives of that 


234 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


day. Behind a far different engine I commenced 
my journey over the same road. Skirting the 
field of Chickamauga, we soon passed through the 
tunnel at Tunnel Hill and had a view of the Buz- 
zard’s Roost, a deep gorge through the mountain 
range known as Rocky Face. Through this 
gorge there ran a stream of water which the 
Confederates had damned up, making a formid- 
able obstacle. By one flank movement after an- 
other Sherman cleverly maneuvered Johnston 
from Dalton to Resaca, from Resaca to Cassville, 
from Cassville to Allatoona, from Allatoona 
to Dallas, until Johnston drew up his army 
in a very strong defensive position at Kennesaw 
Mountain, covering the town of Marietta, and 
about one hundred miles from Chattanooga. The 
retreats were carefully made and Johnston’s army 
left nothing behind it. Nevertheless, in spite of all 
the praise bestowed upon successful retreats, they 
will never uphold any cause, and the continued 
withdrawal of Johnston caused dismay in the Con- 
federate Government at Richmond. 

In the afternoon I secured a stout saddle horse 
at a livery stable and inquired the way to Kenne- 
saw Mountain. I was told that I could ride to the 
foot of the mountain and there would have to 
leave my horse and walk up. Arrived at the farm 
at the base of the mountain, I asked the sallow 
woman who lived there if there was not a path 
by which I could ride to the top. She “reckoned” 
that it was not possible so to do, but indicated 
where I might find the trail. It was a steep and 
rough path, not used perhaps since Johnston’s 
soldiers dragged their guns to the summit, but by 
frequent detours and dismountings I at last 
reached the top and was rewarded by a magnifi- 
cent panorama. Between the mountain and 
Marietta lay a fertile plain with fields of cotton, 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL ZO 


but to the north and west stretched rolling up- 
lands covered with forests. The soil in this part 
of Georgia is red, and as far as the eye ranged, I 
could see the red roads stretching through the 
forests like red ribbons on a green dress. 

The solitary buzzard soaring over my head 
reminded me of the feast his kind had on that 
June day fifty-two years before, when Sherman 
made his assault. Hitherto, Sherman had been 
content to maneuver Johnston out of position, but 
bad roads and the importance of time determined 
him to try to break Johnston’s lines. On the 
twenty-seventh of June, McPherson assaulted 
Kennesaw Mountain, supported on the left by 
Thomas. The attack was gallantly made, but the 
works of the Confederates were impregnable, and 
after losing 2,500 men, Sherman drew off his men, 
and turned to his former tactics. At Kennesaw 
Mountain Johnston had all the advantage that 
Meade had at Gettysburg on Little Round Top 
and Cemetery Hill, and more, too, for Kennesaw 
is a formidable mountain. In the heat of the con- 
flict, after the Union forces had withdrawn a little 
distance from the line reached in their first 
charge, the woods took fire and the Union 
wounded who had been left behind by their re- 
treating comrades were in danger of yet more 
terrible sufferings. The chivalrous Confederates 
called to the Union soldiers to come out and re- 
move their wounded. This was done, many of the 
Confederates assisting in the work. When the in- 
formal truce was over, both sides turned again 
to the business of killing. It was a beautiful 
episode and strangely accentuated the folly of 
war and hatred between those who thus could 
love and serve one another. 

From the top of Kennesaw I could see Pine 
Mountain where the Confederate General Polk 


236 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


was killed. While riding his lines a few days be- 
fore the battle, Sherman noticed a group of offi- 
cers on Pine Mountain. He ordered Howard to 
open on them and scatter them with his artillery. 
At the second or third shot Polk was killed. 
Johnston had noticed the preparations of the bat- 
tery to fire, and cautioning his fellow-officers to 
retire, hurried behind the parapet. Polk, who was 
corpulent and dignified, was slowly moving away 
when a cannonball struck him, killing him in- 
stantly. A monument now marks the place where 
he fell. 

Returning to Marietta, I paid a visit to the Na- 
tional Cemetery. I was surprised to discover that 
more than ten thousand Union dead are buried 
there, more, I think, than in any other of the 
numerous National Cemeteries. So far from 
home they lie—“‘Qui procul hinc, qui ante diem peritt. 
Sed miles, sed pro patria.” I thought of what their 
history had been until it closed in that soldier’s 
grave so far from home: how they had been the 
idolized objects of parental love; then, when war 
came, summoned from field and farm, from shop 
and forge, from college and academy, to bear the 
weapons of war; the orations of the politicians, 
the sermons and benedictions of the clergy, the 
flowers of the children, the tears and kisses of the 
women, the long railroad journey to the front, the 
galling marches, the baptism of fire, the fatal 
wound, and happy they who died at once; but 
most of them to lie all night in forest or on hill- 
side, calling in vain for water and for home and 
for mother; at dawn, when the battle’s roar had 
swept over and beyond them, gathered up, what 
was left of them, flung into ambulances or 
stretched on rude boxcars and shipped to the base 
hospital, there to languish and suffer, in the days 
when war-nursing was not yet a social fad, cared 


ON /SHERMAN'S TRAIL 237 


for by overworked orderlies, sending a last 
message through chaplain or comrade, and then 
the last enemy and the last battle, which is death 
—and after death, this quiet Marietta grave. Now 
how far removed they seem from the battle’s 
smoke and tide. 


No rumor of the foes’ advance 

Now swells upon the wind; 

No troubled thought at midnight haunts 
Of loved ones left behind; 


The neighing troop, the flashing blade, 
The bugle’s stirring blast, 

The charge, the dreadful cannonade, 
The din and shout are past. 


Over the stone archway at the gate I read the 
legend, “Erected by the Government of the 
United States.” The Government of the United 
States! As I walked through the cemetery and 
read the inscriptions on the graves across which 
played the shadows of the pines, those words kept 
repeating themselves in my ears. Yes, there is 
a Government of the United States, a sacred and 
holy thing, not to be expressed in terms of armies 
and navies and legislatures and courts. What is 
the soul of this nation worth? How shall we 
appraise it? Is it worth all the flocks and herds 
which graze upon its thousand hills and pleasant 
meadowlands? Is it worth all those waving seas 
of golden grain now gathered into barns? Is it 
worth all those lonely and majestic forests on the 
shores of the lakes and on the shoulders of the 
mountains, through which the summer winds 
make melancholy music? Is it worth all the coal 
and oil and silver and gold and precious stones 
which lie hidden in their secret chambers waiting 
the potent touch of the rod of industry? Yes; it 
is worth these and far more than these. It is 


238 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


worth the price that was paid to redeem it. Come 
from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon 
these slain that they may live again and tell us 
what the Government of the United States is and 
what the soul of the nation is worth! 

After the bloody repulse at Kennesaw, Sherman 
resorted to his old flanking movements and 
gradually forced Johnston back upon the defenses 
of Atlanta. Johnston had taken up his position 
on the line of the Peach Tree Creek, and was 
planning to stand and fight when he received the 
telegram from Richmond ordering him to turn 
over the command of his army to General Hood. 
This was on the night of the seventeenth of May. 
On the morning of the eighteenth, Hood rode to 
Johnston’s headquarters and urged him to pocket 
the dispatch and fight the battle for Atlanta. 
Hood, Hardee and Stewart sent a joint telegram 
to President Davis requesting that Johnston’s re- 
moval be postponed at least until the battle for 
Atlanta had been decided. Having given his or- 
der, Davis properly refused to withdraw it. Hood 
maintains that he asked Johnston to remain at 
headquarters and give him the benefit of his 
counsel and plans while he determined the issue, 
and that Johnston assented to this, but on that 
evening he rode off into Atlanta and did not re- 
turn. 

The position of Hood on the evening of May 
17th, when he was given the command of the 
army, was not unlike that of Meade when he was 
roused out of his sleep at Taneytown, in June, 
1863, and given the command of the Army of the 
Potomac on the very eve of the battle of Gettys- 
burg; but with this difference—Meade was fol- 
lowing an invading army and could in a measure 
choose his time of battle, whereas when Hood 
took command of the Army of the Tennessee, 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 239 


Sherman was pushing his men over Peach Creek 
and against the Confederate lines. The Army of 
the Cumberland under Thomas was the first to 
get across, and being detached for a little from 
the rest, Hood assaulted it on its exposed flank. 
Sherman’s right withstood all assaults and Hood’s 
own right was now hard pressed by the approach 
of McPherson. The Confederate loss in this 
battle was 6,000, the Federal loss 1,700. 

Before retiring into Atlanta, Hood made one 
more effort to break Sherman’s remorseless en- 
circling iron folds by sending Hardee against 
McPherson on the Union left. The attack was a 
surprise, by reason of the absence of Union 
cavalry, and soon a desperate battle was joined. 
Early in the fight the noble McPherson fell 
mortally wounded. Logan succeeded him in tem- 
porary command and handled the army in a 
courageous and skilful manner. The tide soon 
began to turn against the Confederates, but Hood 
sent division after division forward in hopeless 
and costly assaults. His total loss is estimated at 
10,000. McPherson, then thirty-four years of age, 
more than six feet tall and handsome, was with 
Sherman at his headquarters, the Howard House, 
when the sound of the battle on the left came roll- 
ing in. He leaped upon his horse, and taking 
with him only a few members of his staff, gal- 
loped off in the direction of the firing. In an hour 
he was carried back dead. He had ridden upon 
the Confederate lines in the confusion of the 
battle just as Jackson rode upon the Union lines 
at Chancellorsville, and was shot when attempting 
to turn his horse and escape. The whole army 
mourned his loss and none mourned more sin- 
cerely than the Confederate Commander Hood, 
for he had pleasant memories of McPherson. 
Hood tells of his fondness for McPherson and 


240 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


how, after nights of skylarking at West Point, he 
would early in the morning have recourse to the 
scholarly McPherson to help him with his studies. 
McPherson was to Sherman what Jackson had 
been to Lee. ‘Poor Mac,” writes Sherman, ‘‘was 
killed instantly. His death was a great loss to 
me. I depended much on him.” For a successor 
to McPherson, Sherman chose Howard. Blair 
and Hooker were both offended, Hooker leaving 
the army, considering it an insult that an officer 
whom he outranked and whom he blamed for his 
defeat at Chancellorsville, should be appointed 
over his head. He had not worked well with 
Sherman and the other officers of high rank, and 
none of them was sorry to see him go. His 
withdrawal marked the passing of one of the fore- 
most personalities of the war. Even his best 
friends must have wished that some other cause 
than that of wounded vanity had removed him 
from the ranks of the army. Sherman’s analysis 
of Hooker is, of course, unfriendly, but searching 
and true: “Hooker took offense and has gone 
away. I don’t regret it; he is envious, imperious 
and braggart. Self prevailed with him, and know- 
ing him intimately, I honestly preferred Howard.” 

After the battle of Atlanta, Sherman slowly 
fastened his grip upon it, and on the evening of 
the second of September, Hood evacuated the city. 
Sherman wired the news to Lincoln in these 
words: “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.” The 
news cheered the heart of Lincoln and was a great 
factor in his re-election in November. Grant cele- 
brated the victory by ordering every battery of 
the Army of the Potomac to fire a salute with 
shotted guns against the Confederate lines at 
Petersburg. 


XVIII 
ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 


ATLANTA TO THE SEA 


Before he had reached Atlanta, Sherman in one 
of his letters home, lets drop this hint as to what 
he intended to do with that doomed city: “If I 
can break up that nest, it will be a splendid 
achievement.” His first step in the breaking up 
of this “nest” was the order for the deportation 
of its citizens. In a letter to Halleck he gives as 
his reasons for this extraordinary measure the 
need of his own army for all houses and buildings, 
the contraction of his lines of defense, a poor 
population which would soon have to be fed, and 
the menace to the Federal cause by inevitable 
correspondence between the enemy and _ their 
families in Atlanta. But back of all these reasons 
was his deliberate plan, again and again adverted 
to in his correspondence, to make the people of 
the South realize that war meant “something else 
than vain glory and boasting.” 

The order for deportation occasioned a fiery 
correspondence between Sherman and Hood. 
Hood agreed to send the commissioners to ar- 
range for the removal but protested that the “un- 
precedented measure you propose transcends, in 
studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever before 
brought to my attention in the dark history of 
war. In the name of God and humanity I pro- 
test, believing that you will find that you are ex- 
pelling from their homes and firesides the wives 


241 


242 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


and children of a brave people.” Sherman came 
back with a careful defense of the proposed 
measure and rebuked Hood for his appeal to God: 
“In the name of common sense, I ask you not to 
appeal to a just God in such a sacrilegious man- 
ner. You who, in the midst of peace and pros- 
perity, have plunged a nation into war—dark and 
cruel war—talk thus to the marines, but not to 
me who have seen these things. If we must be 
enemies, let us be men and fight it out as we pro- 
pose to do, and not deal in such hypocritical ap- 
peals to God and humanity. God will judge us 
in due time and He will pronounce whether it be 
more humane to fight with a town full of women 
and the families of a brave people at our back, 
or to remove them in time to places of safety 
among their own friends and people.” 

This letter Hood answered by accepting the 
challenge to fight it out, saying that it was better 
to die a thousand deaths than “submit to live un- 
der you and your Government and your negro 
allies.” To an appeal sent him by the mayor of 
Atlanta, Sherman gave a studied defense of his 
action, saying frankly that the measure was “not 
designed to meet the humanities of the case, but 
to prepare for the future struggles in which mil- 
lions of good people outside of Atlanta have a 
deep interest. We must have peace, not only in 
Atlanta, but in all America. You cannot qualify 
war in harsher terms than I will, WAR IS 
CRUELTY, and you cannot refine it; and those 
who brought war into our country deserve all the 
curses and maledictions a people can pour out. 
You might as well appeal against the thunder- 
storm as against these terrible hardships of war. 
They are inevitable, and the only way the people 
of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace 
and quiet at home is to stop the war, which can 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 243 


only be done by admitting that it began in error 
and is perpetuated in pride. We don’t want your 
negroes, or your horses, or your houses, or your 
lands, or anything you have, but we want and 
will have a just obedience to the laws of the 
United States. That we will have, and if it in- 
volves the destruction of your improvements, we 
cannot help it.” 

Of a voluminous correspondence, this is Sher- 
man’s greatest letter. Indeed, it is one of the 
great documents of the Civil War. The phrase, 
“War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it,” 1s 
probably the source of the more familiar saying 
attributed to Sherman, ‘War is hell.” He could 
not remember ever having said the latter. But 
now it is forever associated with his name. On 
St. Gaudens’ splendid equestrian statue of Sher- 
man, at the entrance to Central Park, New York, 
the sculptor planned to use the lines of Henry 
Van Dyke: 


This is the soldier brave enough to tell 

The glory-dazzled world that War is hell: 

Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife, 

And rides through hell to save his country’s life. 


But he omitted them because of the lack of historic 
evidence that Sherman ever declared war to be 
hell. 

In his admirable life of Robert E. Lee, Thomas 
Nelson Page, in recounting Lee’s invasion of 
Pennsylvania, takes great pleasure in contrasting 
the methods of Lee and Sherman, and writes, 
“War is hell, he was quoted long after as saying. 
He did more than all others to make it so. He 
ruthlessly devastated, not only for the needs of 
his army, but to horrify and appall. He made 
war, not only on men, but on women and chil- 
dren.” Thus ever will the adherents of North 


244 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


and South differ as to the course pursued by 
Sherman. As for those who can take an un- 
biased view of the matter, their conclusions will 
be determined by whether they think a people 
and a country in rebellion against a just and long- 
sulfering government should be rewarded with 
honors and grants, or wasted and devastated in 
order that the rebellion might be put down. 

I found very little in the modern Atlanta, the 
metropolis of the South, to remind me of the 
days when Sherman brought fire and sword to 
her gates, for Sherman utterly destroyed the city 
when he left it for his march to the sea. In 
the center of the town I found the monument 
to Atlanta’s “chief speaker,’ Henry Grady, 
who, speaking at a dinner in Boston on the “New 
South,” leaped from a banquet revelry into na- 
tional fame. On his monument are the words, 
“And when he died he was literally loving a na- 
tion into peace.” Sherman was at the banquet in 
Boston when Grady spoke, and turning to him 
Grady said, “I want to tell General Sherman, who 
is considered an able man in our parts, though 
kind of careless about fire, that from the ashes 
which he left us in 1864, we have built a brave 
and beautiful city, that, somehow or other, we 
have caught the sunshine in the brick and mortar 
of our homes, and have builded therein not one 
ignoble prejudice or memory.” 

Atlanta had fallen, but the chief objective of 
Sherman’s invasion was not Atlanta, but the Con- 
federate Army. That army, though somewhat 
damaged by the hard fighting about Atlanta, was 
still intact and ready for action. Its daring com- 
mander conceived the bold plan of striking Sher- 
man’s line of communication with Chattanooga 
and Nashville. He hoped to recruit his army in 
Tennessee and Kentucky, threaten Ohio, and after 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 245 


worsting any Union force which might be sent 
alter him, cross the mountains and join Lee in 
Virginia. His first blow was struck at Allatoona, 
where on October 4th he attacked the Federal 
garrison and was repulsed. He then moved 
farther to the west and crossed into Alabama. 
Sherman followed him as far as the Alabama 
border and then decided upon the great march 
which has added such lustre to his name. He sent 
his chief lieutenant, Thomas, back to Nashville 
to deal with Hood and resolved to cut loose from 
his base at Chattanooga, burn Atlanta and march 
towards the sea, where he could again establish 
communications with his government. 

After he had taken Atlanta, it had been the plan 
of Grant to have Sherman move south to Mobile 
and use that city as a base. The Federal fleet 
under Farragut had run the forts and destroyed 
the Confederate fleet, but Canby’s military ex- 
pedition against the city had failed. That city as 
a base was now out of the question and Sherman 
had to choose between a pursuit of Hood’s army 
and the march to the sea. The latter plan was 
his own and was opposed by both Grant and 
Thomas. It is neither wise nor safe to criticize 
movements which have completely succeeded, but 
Sherman himself confessed that when he looked 
back he felt like a man who had been walking a 
narrow plank and wondered how he did it. He 
certainly took very grave risks. The destruction 
of the enemy’s army, the aim of his invasion, he 
left to his lieutenant, Thomas. Thanks to Thomas, 
this was effectually done at Nashville in Decem- 
ber. But any failure on the part of Thomas would 
have been disastrous to the Union cause. How 
keenly Grant realized this is shown by the fact 
that, worried by the slowness of Thomas to at- 
tack Hood, he first sent Logan and then started 


246 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


west himself before the news of Thomas’ great 
victory reached him. Even so careful a critic as 
Ropes writes: ‘No margin was left for accidents, 
and Grant and Sherman counted unreasonably upon 
the favor of fortune.” Lincoln was fearful, but 
did not interfere on the principle, as he wrote, of 
“nothing risked, nothing gained.” 

On the morning of the fifteenth of November, 
1864, Sherman’s veteran army, purged of all 
wounded, sick and hangers-on, and with all rail 
and wire communications with Chattanooga and 
Nashville destroyed, swung out of the smoulder- 
ing ruins of Atlanta and to the thousandfold 
chorus of John Brown’s Body headed towards 
the distant sea. It was a happy, devil-may-care 
army, full of enthusiasm and confidence, but as 
Sherman saw them march by and heard them call 
to him, “Uncle Billy, I guess Grant is waiting for 
us at Richmond!” he felt all the more the load of 
responsibility upon him, “for success would be 
accepted as a matter of course, whereas should 
we fail, this march would be adjudged the wild 
adventure of a crazy fool.” His army numbered 
62,000 and was divided into two wings, on the 
right the two corps of the Army of the Tennessee 
under Howard, and on the left the two corps of 
the Army of the Cumberland, now under the 
command of Henry Slocum who had been sum- 
moned from Washington to take the place of 
Hooker when that general resigned in a huff when 
Howard was named to succeed McPherson. 
Meanwhile, as this host marched towards the sea, 
the drums of Hood’s army were beating for the 
advance into Tennessee. 

As the only Confederate army fit to cope with 
Sherman had invaded Tennessee, the march 
through Georgia was little more than a vast 
frolic. The devastation of Georgia, one of the 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 247 


chief granaries of the Confederate armies, would 
soon make itself felt in Lee’s army and the hard- 
ship which it brought to the inhabitants would 
induce many of the Confederate soldiers to desert 
the ranks and visit their helpless relatives. Sher- 
man’s orders to his army contained the phrase, 
“forage liberally on the country.’’ Noreceipts were 
to be given by officers, but they were instructed to 
endeavor to see that private individuals were not 
left without enough to support life. Since he had 
cut loose from his source of supplies, the question 
of forage was the chief one for Sherman's army 
and the march from Atlanta to Savannah may be 
described as a great foraging expedition by an 
army of more than sixty thousand men. 

This was the way in which the foragers carried 
on their trade. A company of fifty men would 
be detailed from each brigade commanded by two 
daring officers, and knowing the destination of the 
army for the day, would issue forth at daylight 
and visit all the plantations along the line of 
march. Horses, mules, ducks, chickens, turkeys, 
in short, almost everything that had legs or wings, 
these foragers collected together, and at evening 
came riding into camp laden with hams, bacon, 
cornmeal, and all that the farms could yield them. 
Though they went forth at morning on foot they 
never failed to return with some kind of a mount, 
and shouts of derision and laughter greeted them 
as their comrades beheld them approaching camp 
mounted on asses, steers, donkeys, horses and 
mules, and arrayed in nondescript finery taken 
from the wardrobe of some proud family. Cox 
tells of a forager who came driving his load of 
plunder behind a team composed of a cow and a 
jackass. Sherman relates seeing a soldier pass 
him with a ham on his musket, a jug of sorghum 
molasses under his arm, and a big piece of honey 


248 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


in his hand from which he was eating. Catching 
Sherman’s eye the wag remarked carelessly to his 
companion, so that Sherman could hear him, 
“Forage liberally on the country,” quoting from 
Sherman’s general orders. It is evident from the 
abundant literature on the subject that the soldiers 
of Sherman’s army took the wasting of Georgia 
as a huge joke, and it is clear, too, that the 
officers of the army had kindred sentiments. 
Sherman says that his sole act of vandalism was 
burning a clock and bedstead in the fire one cold 
night as he lay on the floor of an old mansion. 
But when he stopped at Howell Cobb’s plantation 
he noted with evident satisfaction that the place 
was totally destroyed. General Kilpatrick’s name 
is more closely associated with the sack of Georgia 
than that of any other officer. This was not un- 
natural since he was in command of the cavalry. 
He is the man who boasted that he changed the 
name of a town, Barnwell, to “Burnwell,” and 
he is said to have made a speech at a dinner in 
which he said, “In after years, when travelers 
passing through South Carolina shall see chimney- 
stacks without houses, and the country desolate, 
and shall ask, ‘Who did this? some Yankee will 
answer, ‘Kilpatrick’s cavalry’.” Kilpatrick was 
himself notorious for rapacity and irregular con- 
duct, but Sherman winked at his offenses because 
of his daring and the spirit of fight and enterprise 
which he had instilled in the cavalry brigades 
which did invaluable service in keeping Wheeler 
and his troopers at bay. With such an example 
in an officer in high command, it is not strange 
the junior officers and privates were guilty of ir- 
regularities. But there is no evidence that, 
despite the great provocation and the unusual 
liberty, the men of the army were guilty of crimes 
of rape or violence. Jefferson Davis likened the 


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ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 249 


conduct of Sherman to the “atrocious cruelties of 
the Duke of Alva to the non-combatant population 
of the Low Countries in the Sixteenth Century.” 
Nothing could be more absurd, and it is sufficient 
to point out that it was to this monstrous incarna- 
tion of the Duke of Alva that Confederate officers 
wrote from time to time committing to his care 
their wives and children. 

The term “bummer” arose in this way: there 
was much work to be done by the soldiers, pitch- 
ing and breaking camp, helping the artillery and 
trains through the mud and building bridges and 
corduroy roads. To avoid this toil, large num- 
bers of the men began to straggle to the rear and, 
living on the country, would follow a command 
for days at a time without actually joining it and 
sharing in its labors. Thus Sherman’s hosts made 
their way slowly towards Savannah, consuming 
the country like locusts. The trains and the ar- 
tillery had the right of way on the roads and the 
infantry and cavalry took to the fields and open 
country. At night the country would be lighted 
for miles with the blazing pine knots and the 
burning fence rails. At the first streak of dawn 
the army was again on the march. Sherman 
describes his men as “dirty, ragged and saucy,” 
and exchanged affectionate greetings with the 
soldiers as he rode down their lines, his uniform 
coat wide open, displaying a linen collar and black 
necktie, wearing low shoes and one spur. 

As the army advanced through the country it 
was followed by a swarm of negroes, jubilant over 
their deliverance and implicitly trusting in the 
blue uniform. These poor creatures affectionately 
caressed the sides of Sherman’s horse as he rode 
by, and, following him as they would have done 
the Redeemer Himself had He appeared on earth, 
they hailed him as “Abraham,” “Moses,” and 
“Blessed Jesus.” 


XIX 
ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 
SAVANNAH TO THE END 


Three hundred and twenty-five years before 
Sherman marched to the sea, De Soto led his 
band of six hundred adventurers across the wilder- 
ness of Florida and Georgia in quest of fabled 
gold and the fountain of immortal youth. During 
the centuries that had passed, the sun of Spain’s 
pomp and power had set, and on the foundations 
laid with so much suffering and blood by Spanish, 
Dutch, French and English, there had arisen a 
new empire destined to rival, and perhaps surpass, 
the power of all the kingdoms that had sought the 
prize of the American continents. A great army 
was now marching across Georgia, not in quest 
of gold or youth immortal, but to maintain the 
nation’s authority and vindicate its honor. Na- 
tions live only through the willingness of their 
citizens to die. The nation that loveth its life 
shall lose it. This vast army marching slowly 
towards the sea, singing its songs and waving its 
banners, was a proclamation to mankind that our 
nation knew the secret of life and did not shrink 
from that shedding of blood which renews and 
regenerates. De Soto missed his fabled fountain, 
but the nation found what he had missed. 

Savannah was held by Hardee with a small and 
nondescript garrison. When he had beleaguered 
the town, Sherman called on Hardee to surrender. 
Every true admirer of Sherman could wish that 
his letter calling for the surrender had never 

250 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 25k 


been written. After pointing out to Hardee the 
hopelessness of any defense of the place, he 
offered liberal terms if it were surrendered, but 
added, “But if I should be forced to assault, or 
the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall 
feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, 
and shall make little effort to restrain my army— 
burning to avenge the national wrong which they 
attach to Savannah and other large towns which 
have been so prominent in dragging our country 
into Civil War. I enclose you a copy of General 
Hood’s demand for the surrender of the town of 
Resaca to be used by you for what it is worth.” 
The letter of Hood referred to by Sherman called 
upon the commander at Resaca for immediate 
surrender, promising to parole white officers and 
men, but saying that if he were compelled to 
assault, no prisoners would be taken. The reply 
of Hardee was honorable and dignified, and any 
admirer of Sherman will wish that this letter 
could be expunged from the record of Sherman’s 
correspondence. 

But whether moved by Sherman’s veiled threat, 
or despairing of any effective defense of the town, 
Hardee evacuated the place, and on the twenty- 
first of December, Sherman’s army marched in and 
took possession. The march had wrought enor- 
mous injury to Georgia and had cost the Union 
army but little, the losses being 531 killed and 
1,616 missing. Because of the perfect weather 
conditions and the absence of hard fighting or 
serious natural obstacles, the march to the sea 
was a sort of vast frolic or gigantic promenade. It 
was indeed comparatively bloodless and unim- 
peded, but it was a very necessary link in the 
great chain with which Grant and Sherman were 
binding the strong man of the Confederacy. “I 
only regarded the march from Atlanta to Savan- 


252 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


nah,’ writes Sherman, “as a shift of base, as the 
transfer of a strong army which had no opponent, 
from the interior to a point on the seacoast. I 
considered this march as a means to an end, and 
not as an essential act of war.” 

When I reached Savannah and strolled through 
its quiet and shaded streets, I found it to be much 
as Sherman had described it when he lodged there 
in 1864. “The city of Savannah was an old place 
and usually accounted a handsome one. Its 
houses were of brick or frame, with large yards, 
ornamented with shrubbery and flowers; its 
streets perfectly regular, crossing each other at 
right angles; and at many of the intersections 
were small inclosures in the nature of parks. 
These streets and parks were lined with handsomest 
shade trees of which I have knowledge, viz., the 
willow leaf, live oak, evergreens of exquisite 
beauty.” 

There is little in that description of Savannah 
that one would need to revise today. In one of 
those intersection parks there is a monument to 
General Lafayette McLaws, one of Lee’s best 
lieutenants, and on the base are these words, re- 
vealing the spirit of an unreconstructed Con- 
federate, and indeed typical of the whole South: 
“I fought not for what I thought to be right, but 
for the principles that were right.” The mighty 
live oaks, sentinels of events when there was 
neither North nor South, first impress and delight 
one, and then sink the spirit with melancholy. The 
best exhibition of these is in the ancient cemetery 
of Bonaventura where lies the dust of many of 
the famous personages of the early history of 
Georgia. The trunks of the trees are immense and the 
stems begin to branch near to the ground. Neither 
summer’s sun nor winter’s rain can penetrate the 
branches to shine or fall upon the graves they 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 253 


guard. In this cemetery, there is to be seen a 
tribute of a husband to his deceased wife which 
leaves little to be desired: “Think of what 
woman ought to be: This was she.” 

At Savannah Sherman heard of the death of an 
infant son whom he had never seen. Here, too, 
came Stanton urging Sherman to bring the war 
to a conclusion and holding conferences with the 
hegroes, even going so far as to have Sherman 
withdraw from the conference that he might quiz 
the negroes as to their opinion about one of the 
great figures of the war. Savannah had been a 
great port for the blockade runners, and one of 
these dare-devils sailed saucily into port and tied 
up at the docks, never knowing that the place 
had changed hands. It had been the plan of 
Grant to have Sherman leave an entrenched camp 
about Savannah and transport the rest of his 
army by water to join him about City Point. 
Sherman prepared to comply with this instruction, 
but was eager for the taking of the city and sug- 
gested the march through the Carolinas. Before 
Grant could change the orders, Savannah was 
evacuated and Grant gladly yielded to the sug- 
gestion of the march through the Carolinas, 

The March to the Sea is the subject of song, 
and whenever we think of the name of Sherman, 
we think of that march. But the March to the 
Sea was insignificant as a military achievement, 
Save in a preparatory sense, compared with the 
march from Savannah through North and South 
Carolina. “The last march,” writes Sherman, 
“from Savannah to Goldsboro, with its legitimate 
fruits, the capture of Charleston, Georgetown and 
Wilmington, is by far the most important in con- 
ception and execution of any act in my life.” On 
the twenty-first of January, Sherman left Savan- 
nah and the great and final campaign had com- 


254 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


menced. It was to prove one of the most diffi- 
cult marches of military history. It led through 
swamps where every mile of the road had to be 
corduroyed and across deep and swollen rivers, 
and in the presence of an alert, if not numerous, 
enemy. 

The advent of Sherman’s army in South 
Carolina was hailed with satisfaction in the North, 
for there was a general expectation and a warm 
desire that war in distributing its sorrows and 
curses and losses should not overlook that state 
which, more than any of the Southern states, was, 
whether rightly or wrongly matters not, held 
responsible for the Civil War. Her ante-bellum 
statesmen had been the most violent and virulent 
in their public utterances and the loudest in their 
defiance of the Government. Indeed, the first act 
of violence in the struggle might well be con- 
sidered the assault of one of South Carolina’s 
senators, Preston Brooks, upon Senator Sumner, 
and for which he was presented in South Carolina 
with a gold-headed cane inscribed, “Hit him 
again!” The North had not forgotten the de- 
fiance of South Carolina in the days of Andrew 
Jackson, nor all the acts of that state culminating 
in her setting the example of secession and firing 
the first shot at the national flag. Under these 
circumstances, it was only natural that there 
should have been a wish to see some of the hor- 
rors of war visited upon that state, and particu- 
larly upon Charleston. Halleck in writing to 
Sherman at Savannah about his future move- 
ments but voiced the national sentiment when he 
said, “Should you capture Charleston, I hope that 
BY SOME ACCIDENT the place may be de- 
stroyed, and, if a little salt should be sown upon 
its site, it may prevent the growth of future crops 
of nullification and secession.” Sherman replied: 


= 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL Paste 


“I will bear in mind your hint about Charleston, 
and do not think ‘salt’ will be necessary. When 
I move the 15th Corps will be on the right of the 
right wing, and their position will naturally bring 
them into Charleston first; and, if you have 
watched the history of that Corps, you will have 
remarked that they generally do their work pretty 
well. The truth is the whole army is burning 
with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance 
upon South Carolina. I almost tremble at her 
fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems to 
be in store for her.” 

The people of South Carolina greeted the com- 
ing of Sherman with taunts and threats that he 
would find his South Carolina experience far 
different from his parade through Georgia. But 
neither taunts nor threats turned Sherman from 
the path of strategy. The objective of his army 
was not Charleston, but the capital, Columbia. 
His army reached this city on February 17th, and 
on the next day Charleston was evacuated, as the 
advance of Sherman made the position of the 
garrison there hopeless. That was the dismal 
fate of that proud fire-eating city. It was not 
honored by encircling lines of steel, nor did the 
conquerors army parade in pomp through its 
streets. With scorn and contempt, referring to 
the city as “a dead cock in the pit,” he passed 
it by and left it to ignominous evacuation. How 
ironical, sometimes, are the judgments of war! 

But Charleston, if not worth a visit from Sher- 
man’s army, was worth my time, and I turned 
aside from the trail of that army to visit the city. 
Here, better than anywhere else, one sees the 
haughty, chivalrous, provincial South of olden 
times. Part of the city had been burned by the 
bombardments, but it had escaped the fate of 
many less guilty sisters. Its ancient churches of 


256 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


St. Michael and St. Patrick, its pillared market 
place, its lofty houses with galleries half-hidden 
by vines and shrubbery, its rambling streets and 
ramshackle stores and warehouses, its venerable 
monuments, its cenotaph of John C. Calhoun, and 
last but not least, the walls of Sumter, all combine 
to give Charleston an interest of mingled ro- 
mance and melancholy such as is not elsewhere 
to be met with in the South. I took the ferry 
over to Sullivan’s Island, the site of Fort Moultrie, 
and where Sherman had been stationed as a young 
officer thirty years before. Sitting on a bench on 
the bayshore, I could see far off in the distance 
the white marble of the Customs House and be- 
yond, the spires of St. Michael’s and St. Patrick’s. 
A half-mile out in the bay was a low-lying fort 
with mounted guns and the national emblem fly- 
ing on the wall. To a passer-by I said, ‘““What fort 
is that?” “That, sir? Why, thatis Fort Sumten™ 
Fort Sumter! What memories the name called 
forth. Near the very spot where I was sitting, 
fifty-five years before, at half-past four on the 
morning of the twelfth of April, a shell from one 
of the batteries rose high into the air and fell with 
a hiss into the sea close to the walls of Sumter. 
The next day the flag was lowered and the fort 
evacuated. Four years afterwards to the very 
day, early on the morning of the twelfth of April, 
1865, the guns on Sullivan’s Island spoke again. 
But this time no hostile shell fell into the sea, for 
it was a salute and not a challenge, and every 
gun that four years before had opened fire on 
Fort Sumter now thundered a salutation which 
acknowledged before all the world the sovereignty 
and inviolability of the flag that had been raised 
again over those smoldering ruins and proclaimed 
to the world that the Government of the United 
States could and would endure. In the delegation 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL Ans 


which went down to Charleston to take part in 
the celebration of raising the flag over Sumter 
was William Lloyd Garrison. When the party 
visited the old cemetery where John C. Calhoun is 
buried, the other members, when they came to 
the grave of Calhoun, stood silent, waiting to see 
what the great abolitionist would have to say by 
the grave of slavery’s ablest defender. Looking 
down on the grave, Garrison said slowly, “Down 
into a grave deeper than this, slavery has gone, 
and for it there will be no resurrection.” 

Before his troops crossed the river to Colum- 
bia, Sherman let one of his batteries throw a few 
shells in the direction of the half-finished State 
House. One of these struck the wall and its 
effect is still to be seen in the stones just above 
the Palmetto Monument to South Carolina 
soldiers in the War with Mexico. It was not the 
intention of Sherman to destroy Columbia, but 
during the first night of the occupation, fire broke 
out in the town. Sherman declares that Wade 
Hampton on retiring from Columbia had fired 
the cotton so that it would not fall into the hands 
of his army. The situation was not helped by 
the presence of many intoxicated soldiers who 
had discovered quantities of whiskey. General 
Howard, under the supervision of Sherman, took 
vigorous measures to check the flames and restore 
order, but notwithstanding all his efforts, a great 
deal of the town was gutted by the flames. The 
burning of Columbia on this winter night has 
been, in the eyes of the South, Sherman’s most 
heinous offense. Grant, who was anything but 
destructive in his nature, wrote of Columbia and 
its destruction: “In any case, the example set by 
the Confederates in burning the village of Cham- 
bersburg, Pennsylvania, a town which had not 
been garrisoned, would seem to make defense of 


258 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


the act of firing the seat of government of the 
state most responsible for the conflict then raging 
not imperative.” 

Some years after the war, Andrew D. White, then 
President of Cornell University, made a visit to 
Columbia. In the State Legislature he heard the 
presiding officer, a mulatto, order a white gentle- 
man to take his seat. “To this,’ he says, “it has 
come at last. In the presence of this assembly, 
in the hall where disunion really had its birth, 
where secession first shone out in all its glory, a 
former slave ordered a former master to sit down 
and was obeyed. I began to feel a sympathy for 
the South, and this feeling was deepened by what 
I saw in Georgia and Florida; and yet, below it 
all, I seemed to see the hand of God in history, 
and in the midst of it all I seemed to hear a deep 
voice from the dead. To me, seeing these things, 
there came reverberating out of the last century 
that prediction of Thomas Jefferson, himself a 
slaveholder, who, after depicting the offenses of 
slavery, ended with these words worthy of Isaiah 
—divinely inspired if any ever were—‘I tremble when 
I remember that God is just!’ ”’ 

From Columbia the army marched to Golds- 
boro. Johnston was once again in command of 
the army in front of Sherman, and showed it 
by a carefully planned engagement at Bentonville. 
But numbers failing him, he was compelled again 
to fall back. On the twenty-fourth of March the 
army concentrated at Goldsboro and Sherman 
went to City Point, Va., where he talked with Grant 
and Lincoln. The tender-hearted Lincoln hoped 
that the war might be brought to a close without 
another great battle, but both Grant and Sherman 
thought that another decisive engagement would 
have to be fought before the Confederacy col- 
lapsed. In discussing the fate of the Confederate 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 259 


leaders, Lincoln told of a total abstinence man 
who, upon being urged to take a little brandy 
with his lemonade, responded that if it were put 
in “unbeknownst” to him he would drink it. 
Lincoln evidently hoped that the leaders of the 
Confederacy would escape out of the country and 
save his Government the embarrassment of deal- 
ing with them. 

When he returned to Goldsboro, Sherman was 
just about to put his army on the march for 
Roanoke when the thrilling news came of Lee’s 
evacuation of Petersburg, and the army marched 
on Raleigh and against Johnston. On the eleventh of 
April, the army was cheered by the tidings of the 
surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox Court 
House. When the courier galloped down the 
lines shouting the surrender of Lee, the men in 
the ranks threw their hats after him, turned 
somersaults like boys and pounded one another 
On) the back in their glee: A Southern woman 
was at headquarters to ask protection for her 
family. As she learned the meaning of the shout- 
ing she looked down at the children who held to 
her skirts and said with the tears running down 
her cheeks, “Now father will come home!” Per- 
haps he did; perhaps not. Many hearts were say- 
ing the same thing that spring morning, east and 
west, north and south. For many, father never 
came. The spring passed into summer, and sum- 
mer ripened into autumn, and autumn faded into 
winter, but father, brother, husband, son never 
came. Monuments were destined to rise in many 
a city square in the South and before many a 
county courthouse in the North; in many an in- 
scription in stone and bronze, in many a sermon 
and oration, in many a song or book the heroism 
of the men who had died was to be described and 
extolled. But poetry and oratory and sculpture, 


260 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


storied urn and animated bust could not soothe 
the ear of death nor bring back to yearning hearts 
aught save the memories of those thousands 
whom war had claimed for its victims. 

At Raleigh, Sherman took up quarters in the. 
Governor’s mansion. The world was ringing with 
his fame, but the heart of the conqueror was 
tender with the memories of the boy who had 
died at Memphis two years before, and we find 
him yearning for his presence: “Oh, that Willie 
could hear and see! His proud heart would swell 
to overflowing, and it may be that ‘tis better he 
should not be agitated with such thoughts.” How 
often the rewards, the decorations and the accents 
of recognition and fame come when those with 
whom it would have been pleasant to share them 
have passed away. 

After the surrender of Lee, Johnston sent in a 
flag asking for an armistice. As Sherman was 
leaving Raleigh to go out to Durham to meet 
Johnston, a telegram was handed him telling of 
the assassination of Lincoln. Arrived at Durham, 
he rode on horseback to the Bennett farmhouse 
about five miles out from Durham, and went into 
conference with Johnston. An armistice was ar- 
ranged and at the meeting the next day at the 
same place, Sherman drew up the famous terms 
of surrender. His conversation with Lincoln led 
him to believe that the most lenient terms were 
to be offered to the Confederate armies. It is 
possible, too, that Sherman by his overgenerous 
terms hoped to placate the South because of its 
bitter feeling towards his invasion. In addition 
to the arrangements for the surrender of John- 
ston’s army, it was stipulated that the arms of the 
Confederates were to be deposited at the state 
houses of the different states, a general amnesty 
proclaimed and the state governments recognized 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 261 


when they took the oath of allegiance to the 
Union. Sherman did not pretend to make these 
extraordinary terms final without consulting his 
Government. When a copy reached Washington 
they were flatly rejected and their author dealt with 
as if he had planned treason. With prophetic 
forecast Sherman had written to his wife from 
Atlanta saying, “In revolutions men rise and fall. 
Long before this war is over, much as you may 
hear me praised now, you may hear me cursed 
and insulted. Read history, read Coriolanus, and 
you will see the true measure of popular ap- 
plause.”” But he could hardly have foreseen the 
tumult of anger and rage which burst upon him 
because of his ill-judged protocol. Stanton pub- 
lished the terms in the newspapers as if he were 
discovering to the country a villain and a traitor, 
and orders were sent to Grant to go at once to 
North Carolina and press the campaign against 
Johnston. Other orders were sent to army 
officers in the South to pay no attention to Sher- 
man’s orders. If our indignation rises at the 
story of this heartless dealing with a heroic com- 
mander, it must be remembered that the assassina- 
tion of Lincoln had brought the Government to 
a state bordering on panic. Stanton, whatever he 
was not, was certainly a sincere Jover of his 
country. 

The actions of Sherman and Grant at this 
crisis represent these two Commanders at their 
best. In that hour neither of them did anything 
unworthy of themselves or their country. In- 
stead of publicly humiliating Sherman by taking 
command of his army, Grant came quietly to 
headquarters at Raleigh, told Sherman of the re- 
jection of his terms, and advised him to notify 
Johnston of the cessation of the armistice and 
demand the immediate surrender of his army on 


262 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


the terms of Grant to Lee. Having done this, he 
as quietly withdrew and went back to Virginia, 
leaving Sherman to conclude negotiations with 
Johnston, Sherman immediately complied with 
these directions, and meeting Johnston for a third 
time at the Bennett house, the surrender was 
effected. But he never forgave either Halleck 
or Stanton, and relates with evident relish how, 
when he went on the reviewing stand at the 
White House, when his army was passing in re- 
view, he publicly ignored the proffered hand of 
Stanton. 

At one of these interviews Mr. John C. Breck- 
inridge, Secretary of War in the Confederate Gov- 
ernment and formerly Vice-President of the 
United States, was present, and took a prominent 
part in the negotiations. In the midst of the 
discussions General Sherman pushed back his 
chair and exclaimed, “See here, gentlemen, who 
is doing this surrendering anyhow? If this thing 
goes on, you will have me sending a letter of 
apology to Jefferson Davis.” John S. Wise, who 
also was present, relates how, near the close of 
the conference, Sherman “arose, went to the 
saddlebags and fumbled for the bottle. Preoccu- 
pied, perhaps unconscious of his action, he poured 
out some liquor, shoved the bottle back into the 
saddlebags, walked to the window, and stood 
there looking out abstractedly while he sipped his 
grog. Pleasant hope and expectation on the face 
of Breckinridge changed successively to uncer- 
tainty, disgust and depression.” As a young 
man, Breckinridge spent a year in Princeton 
Theological Seminary as a student for the min- 
istry of the Presbyterian Church. At the end of 
his year in that famous school of the prophets, 
one of his aunts admonished him to give up his 
studies, saying to him, “John, you ought not to 


ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 263 


be studying for the ministry; you have no more 
religion than a horse!’ When the officers were 
chatting with one another after the conference, 
Sherman told Breckinridge that he ought to get 
out of the country, as the feeling of the people 
of the North was particularly bitter towards him, 
because as Vice-President of the United States 
he had solemnly announced Mr. Lincoln duly and 
properly elected President, and afterwards had 
taken up arms against the Government. Breckin- 
ridge assured Sherman that he would lose no time 
in leaving the country. He went to Cuba, and 
thence to Europe, but returned to the United 
States in 1868. 

Past the building of Trinity College and through 
fields redolent of tobacco, I was driven the five 
miles from Durham to the farmhouse where the 
two generals met. At first I thought that I was 
to be disappointed, for all I saw was the ruins of 
a cabin and what appeared to be a deserted barn. 
I cut a branch from the sycamore tree beneath 
which their house had stood, and was about to go 
away, when looking through the cracks of the 
barn, I discovered that the house was within, and 
that what I took to be a barn was a protection 
built around the house to safeguard it from the 
elements. There were two rooms on the first 
floor, and in the living-room was a huge, crum- 
bling fireplace, with wide oak boards on the floor. 
Here the two generals on that day met. When 
they were alone, Sherman took from his pocket 
the telegram announcing the assassination of Lin- 
coln and showed it to Johnston. As he read it, 
his face betrayed the greatest agitation, and turn- 
ing to Sherman he denounced the crime in un- 
measured terms. When their signatures had been 
attached to the agreement, they rose, shook 
hands, mounted their horses and rode off in oppo- 


264 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


site directions, leaving forever behind them the 
toils and dangers of four long years of war. 

As I stepped out into the sunlight once more 
and started back to Durham, I felt that I, too, 
was leaving behind me, if not the battles and the 
dangers, at least the highways and the byways 
of the great conflict. Seven years before, my 
pilgrimage had commenced when I wandered over 
the fields and through the woods of Gettysburg, 
and musing among the monuments conceived the 
desire to visit all the areas of the Civil War. East 
and west and south from Gettysburg my jour- 
neys had led me; into Maryland through the 
streets of sleepy Frederick and over the hills be- 
tween which flows the quiet Antietam; through 
the tangled woods of the Wilderness and Chan- 
cellorsville, down into the crater at Petersburg 
and along the Appomattox and the James to 
Lynchburg and Lexington; up the Valley of the 
Shenandoah to Harper’s Ferry and the Potomac; 
over the mountains into Tennessee; up the yellow 
Cumberland to Donnelson and down the broad 
Tennessee to the forest solitudes of Shiloh; across 
that river to the Mississippi, and down the Missis- 
sippi to Memphis and Vicksburg upon their 
bluffs; back to the wooded hills where the Chicka- 
mauga makes music on a summer’s day; over the 
mountains to Atlanta, from Atlanta to the sea, 
from Savannah across the rivers and swamps to 
Columbia, from Columbia to proud and haughty 
Charleston, and thence to this cabin on the Dur- 
ham road where Johnston surrendered his army 
to Sherman on the pleasant April morning and 
the nation stood regenerated. 


xX 
APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE 
THe Last PHASE 


“Thou hast a name; thou livest and art dead.” 
These words of the angel to the Church in Sardis 
rose to my mind as I came to the village, where 
the curtain fell on the Confederacy. Have you 
ever felt your heart sink when you alighted at 
some dismal backwoods station? To know this 
feeling at its worst you must get off at Appomat- 
tox. It is the abomination of desolation—a ram- 
bling railway shed, a corner store with horses, 
mules and oxen standing at the rail, a few sallow 
whites, a negro here and there—this is Appomat- 
tox. Anyone would have surrendered here. 

The Army of the Potomac, which Grant had 
been using as remorselessly as a sledgehammer, 
had at length battered Lee out of his lines at 
Petersburg. Long before, it had been suggested 
to Lee that he should give up Richmond and re- 
tire to the south and west. But aside from the 
loss of prestige, the surrender of Richmond meant 
the loss of the Tredegar Iron Works, the chief 
source of supply for the Confederate artillery. 
Therefore, Richmond was defended to the last 
ditch. But the battle of Five Forks, in which 
Sheridan routed Pickett, made it imperative for 
Lee to move then or never. The first objective 
of Lee was Danville, and after that a junction 
with Joseph E. Johnston in the Carolinas. But 
the impetuosity of the Federal pursuit kept turn- 
ing him towards the north and he headed his 
columns for Lynchburg. On the sixth of April, 

265 


266 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Ewell’s Corps was cut off and captured at 
Sailor’s Creek. The next day, at Farmville, Grant 
met a Dr. Smith, who was a relative of Ewell and 
had talked with him after his capture. Ewell had 
told him that their cause was lost and that killing 
now would be little better than murder. This, 
together with news from Sheridan that he was 
starting to destroy stores for Lee’s army which 
had been sent from Lynchburg to Appomattox 
Court House, moved Grant to open communica- 
tions with Lee and to tell him that he wished to 
shift from his shoulders responsibility for the further 
effusion of blood. This was the first of a number of 
communications between Grant and Lee during the 
seventh, eighth and ninth of April, while the two 
armies were racing for the station at Appomattox. 
Sheridan got there first and Custer destroyed the 
stores for Lee’s ragged and hungry soldiers. The 
head of Lee’s column on that evening, April 8th, 
had reached the courthouse about five miles east 
of the station. Lee held a council of war with 
Gordon, Longstreet and Fitzhugh Lee, when it 
was determined to attack Sheridan, who lay di- 
rectly in their path, in the morning. But if it 
should prove that the Federal infantry also was 
up, they would give up the fight. In the gray 
dawn of that April morning the bugles blew once 
more and the “rebel yell” was heard as the Army 
of Northern Virginia moved out to its last at- 
tack. After a few minutes’ fighting the cavalry 
fell off to either side, and the ragged veterans of 
Lee found themselves confronted by the steel 
lines of the infantry under Ord who had come up 
during the night. The white flag went up and 
the war was over. 

The courthouse near the site of the surrender 
was destroyed by fire in 1892 and rebuilt in the 
village. The jail still stands, together with a num- 


APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE — 267 


ber of taverns which drove a thriving trade when 
court met and differences were settled with law- 
yers inside the courthouse, and without lawyers 
on the green outside. 

Appomattox is singularly free of monuments. 
There are a few markers indicating the position 
of the forces at the time of the surrender and one 
monument to the troops of North Carolina, and 
that is all. From the main road of reddish clay 
a lane leads into a bit of woods, and there under 
the trees stands the solitary monument of Appo- 
mattox. We shall let the stone tell its own story, 
for it is an eloquent tribute to the valor and con- 
secration, not only of North Carolina, but also of 
all the Southland: 


Appomattox Court House, 
North Carolina Monument. 
Esse Quam Videri 
First at Bethel 
Farthest to the Front at Gettysburg 
and 
Chickamauga. 
Last at Appomattox. 
9,012 North Carolinians Paroled at Appomattox 
North Carolina, 1860 


Whole Population 629,942 
Military Population 115,359 
1861-5 
Troops Furnished 127,000 


This Stone is erected by the authority of 
The General Assembly 
of 
North Carolina. 
In Grateful and Perpetual Memory of the Valor, 
Endurance and Patriotism of Her Sons, 
Who followed with unshaken fidelity the 
Fortunes of the Confederacy to the Closing 
Scene. 
Faithful to the end. 
Erected 9th April, 1905 


268 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


Just after Lee sent his request to Grant for a 
cessation of hostilities, Longstreet thought he had 
discovered a way of escape and sent Colonel 
Haskell to ride to Lee, telling him to “kill his 
mare,” a beautiful blooded animal. He ruined 
the mare, but the ride was in vain. Colonel Bab- 
cock, of Grant’s staff, found Lee resting by the 
roadside with his blanket spread under an apple 
tree. As they rode into the hamlet, they met a 
Mr. Wilmer McLean and asked him to direct them 
to a suitable house. He led them to the sitting- 
room of the first house they came to. Lee ex- 
pressed dissatisfaction with the room and _ its 
furnishings, whereupon McLean took them to his 
own house. This Wilmer McLean had formerly 
lived at Manassas Junction and his house there 
had been used as headquarters by the Confederate 
officers. McLean thought it expedient to move 
to quieter regions and had gone into this remote 
section of Virginia, only to be followed by the 
clamor of war and to see his house used as the 
meeting-place of the generals of the two armies. 
The McLean house was dismantled with a view 
to exhibiting it at the Chicago Fair. But the deal 
fell through, and for almost a score of years it has 
been lying there a dismal ruin, the finishing touch 
to the picture of desolation and dreariness at Appo- 
mattox. 

Grant was lying in his tent, suffering from one 
of his sick headaches, when the news reached him 
that Lee had asked for an interview. This in- 
formation cured him and he at once hastened to 
the front, passing through the lines of Meade. 
When he reached the front and came to where 
Sheridan and a number of officers were, he said 
to Sheridan in his unsentimental, matter-of-fact 
way, “How are you, General?” Sheridan replied 
that he was “first rate,” and then told Grant that 


APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE 269 


Lee was waiting for him in the McLean house. 
The officers who accompanied Grant waited at 
the door of the house, but Colonel Babcock, of 
Grant’s staff, came out saying, “The General 
says ‘Come in’.” The officers then filed in and 
stood silently about the walls as if in a sickroom 
where a spirit was being loosed from the body. It 
was the death chamber, not of a man, but of a 
nation, and the hopes of millions of men and 
women. The Southern Confederacy was dying; 
whatever soul had animated it was being set free 
from the mortal body, beaten and scarred with 
the passion and tempest of four years’ unceasing 
war. Death always bestows upon the dying a 
certain majesty, whether it be a dying man or a 
dying nation, and the officers who crowded into 
the little parlor of the Virginia farmhouse that 
spring afternoon, felt themselves in the presence 
of a great mystery. Thousands upon thousands 
of men had prayed and fought and died that the 
tabernacle of the Confederacy might be dissolved 
and that this end might come. But now that it had 
come, men felt that a Power greater than man 
had brought it about. 

The last time Grant and Lee had met was dur- 
ing the Mexican War when Grant, contrary to 
orders that had been issued, appeared at General 
Scott’s headquarters in undress and was repri- 
manded by Lee, who called his attention to Scott’s 
orders. So far as uniform was concerned, their 
meeting at Appomattox presented a yet greater 
contrast than that meeting long before in Mexico. 
Lee was handsomely attired in a new uniform and 
high cavalry boots with ornamental red stitches. 
He wore a jewel-studded sword which Grant sur- 
mised had been presented to him by the State 
of Virginia. Grant was swordless, and wore a 
soldier’s blouse for a coat with the dingy shoulder 


270 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


straps of a lieutenant-general. It was a strange 
contrast which they presented, and Grant after- 
wards confessed, “I must have contrasted 
strangely with a man so handsomely dressed, six 
feet high, and of faultless form. But this was not 
a matter that I thought of until afterwards.” 
Grant was sixteen years the junior of Lee, in 
ancestry, birth, training, all that Lee was not. But 
Americans today can look back upon that scene 
in the front room of the McLean house and be 
proud to say that they are the countrymen of 
either Grant or Lee. Lee was great in life’s 
supreme test—adversity—and Grant was magnani- 
mous in his triumph. 

After a few moments’ conversation about old 
days in the Mexican War, Lee turned to the 
business in hand and asked Grant for his terms. 
The final draft of the terms of surrender was 
made by Colonel Parker, of Grant’s staff. Parker 
was a full-blooded Indian, and when he was pre- 
sented, a look of surprise spread over Lee’s face, 
for he evidently took him to be a negro. This 
was the only feeling manifested in the face of 
Lee. There was no taking of swords or other 
dramatic doings which belong to the apocrypha of 
the Civil War. So far as outward appearances 
were concerned, it might have been an interview 
at army headquarters. Grant relates that Lee’s 
face gave no intimation of what he felt. “What 
General Lee’s feelings were, I do not know. As 
he was a man of much dignity with an impassive 
face, it was impossible to say whether he felt 
inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or 
felt sad over the result, and was too manly to 
show it. Whatever his feelings, they were en- 
tirely concealed from my observation; but my 
own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on 
the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. 


AEPOMA TiO COURT HOUSE. 271 


I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the 
downfall of a foe who had fought so long and 
valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, 
though the cause was, I believe, one of the worst 
for which a people ever fought, and one for which 
there was the least excuse.” 

At four o’clock the interview was over. As he 
stood on the porch waiting for his horse to be 
brought, Lee seemed not to see the Union officers 
who had uncovered before him in the yard, and 
gazed abstractedly in the direction of his army, 
thrice smiting his gauntleted left palm with his 
right fist. Then he mounted his “chunky gray 
horse” and rode off towards his own lines. Sher- 
idan and the other officers soon heard cheering 
which as it progressed, varying in loudness, “told 
he was riding through the bivouac of the Army of 
Northern Virginia.” It was his last ride through 
that army. As he passed down the lines, his men 
put forth their hands to touch the sides of 
“Traveler,” some of them cheering, some of them 
crying. General Longstreet says that he “rode 
with his hat off, and had sufficient control to fix 
his eyes on a line between the ears of “Traveler’ 
and look neither to the right nor left until he 
reached a large white oak tree, where he dis- 
mounted to make his last headquarters and finally 
talked a little.” 

Men speak of the sadness in the countenance 
of Lincoln as he trod the winepress alone. Hardly 
less marked is the sadness that we discern in the 
face of him in whose person were summed up all 
the hopes and all the virtues of the Southern Con- 
federacy. It was the sadness of a man who had 
given his great genius on the field of battle and 
his influence among his countrymen to the main- 
tenance of a cause which his conscience could not 
approve. Concerning slavery and secession, his 


272 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS 


utterances are clear and unmistakable. It was a 
strange turn in destiny that made this man the 
leader of the armed revolt of the South. It is not 
for us to judge him. In the course that he, and 
many like him, took, we see the demonstration of 
the truth that in time of revolution men act senti- 
mentally, rather than logically. Lee’s judgment 
was against slavery, either the extension of it 
or the maintenance of it as it then existed, 
and as for secession he considered it, as it 
proved to be, the sum of evils. But the tides 
of emotion drew him to the shore upon which 
stood his friends and kinsmen. Did Lee ever ex- 
pect to win the war? His whole manner of life 
and speech indicates a contrary belief. Now and 
then the usually calm surface of this man’s life 
was perturbed and he gave utterance to thoughts 
that lay deep within his mind. Just before the 
surrender at Appomattox, John S. Wise, son of 
Governor Wise, who had gone with Jefferson 
Davis and the Confederate Government into 
North Carolina, came to Lee with a message from 
Davis. He brought him the tidings, too, of the 
defeat of Ewell at Sailor’s Creek. Speaking more 
to himself than to others, Lee ejaculated, “A few 
more Sailor’s Creeks and it will be all over— 
ended—just as I expected it would end from the 
first.” Therein was the sadness of General Lee— 
he was leading a cause which he knew from the ~ 
beginning was lost. 

In the Union lines the artillery officers had 
commenced to fire a salute of one hundred guns 
in honor of the surrender, but this Grant promptly 
stopped. No loud clangor of war’s rude instru- 
ments broke the peaceful silence of the spring 
Sabbath. The day suited the great deed there 
enacted. It was God’s own Day of Rest. The 
God of Peace had again visited His people. 


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APPOMATTOX COURT HOUSE!) :\273 


There is a fitness, after all, thought I, in this 
lonely monument beneath the pines, to the 
soldiers of North Carolina, with the birds singing 
all about it. If Appomattox was to have any 
memorial, it is well that it should be to the 
memory of the vanquished and not to the memory 
of the victors. Here lies buried the Confederacy, 
“One of those causes which pleased noble spirits, 
but did not please destiny.” 


THE END 


AUTHORITIES 


For a period of sixteen years I have made the 
Civil War a subject of special study and investi- 
gation. So far as the written sources are con- 
cerned, I have consulted, of course, the War 
Records, the great compilation of the official 
records of the Union and Confederate Armies; 
the biographies and autobiographies of the chief 
actors of the drama on either side; the numerous 
histories of the War, and letters and private 
documents, printed or unprinted, written by those 
who were in the battles. Going through this im- 
mense literature I have tried to glean that which 
has appealed to me and which I have felt might 
serve to awaken in the reader an interest in the 
iron age of our country’s history. 

The labor of these investigations has been 
pleasantly relieved by a series of summer jour- 
neys which have taken me over all the principal 
areas of the War, east and west, north and south. 
This has enabled me to get a clear understanding 
of the strategy and tactics of the several cam- 
paigns, and to form a mental picture of the great 
battles, which otherwise would not have been 
possible. I have tried to describe the battlefields 
as they were in the ’Sixties when trodden by the 
ruthless foot of war, and as they are today, some 
of them marked with costly and beautiful monu- 
ments, and frequented by throngs of visitors, and 
others, and the most impressive, as wild and re- 
mote as when the clashing armies first invaded 
their forest solitudes. 


274 


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Highways and byways of the civil war 


Princeton Theological Seminary—Speer Library 


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1 1012 00024 3388 





